Ebb
by Thethuthinnang
Summary: BtVS.LotR. She remembered them, the others, often in her sleep. 2nd in Water.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

The old man said his name was Rorimac. His wife's name was Menegilda, and they told her that they shouldn't mind a bit if she wanted to call them Grandfather and Grandmother or Uncle and Aunt. They gave her a large room just next to theirs, one of the biggest and nicest rooms at Brandy Hall, and they said she should never fear to call out for them if she needed to.

Menegilda held her hand and asked her what her name was. She put her thumb in her mouth and shook her head.

"Just a name, wee carrot," another man, younger, who said his name was Saradoc, said, crouching down in front of her. "Else what will we call you?"

"Don't know," she muttered into her thumb.

They stood whispering over her head, as if she couldn't hear them. She pretended not to. Then they looked down at her again, and Menegilda said, "Well, buttercup—Buttercup! Shall we call you Buttercup? For your hair?"

She whispered "Hair isn't butter," but neither heard her over Saradoc's big laugh and his "Buttercup! Our Buttercup."

Rorimac was the Master of Buckland, someone had told her, and Saradoc was his son. That made them important. She didn't want them to be bothered with her, and tried harder than ever to remember who her parents were, so that then they could know who her parents' people were and then they could send her home to faces she recognized, to where she didn't feel so strange. But she couldn't, no matter how she tried, so she let Menegilda hold her hand and cried very quietly in her bed so that no one could hear her.

They all came to see her, a lot of people who lived in Brandy Hall. There was Esmerelda, Saradoc's new wife, and Merimac, Saradoc's brother. There were Amaranth and Asphodel, who were Rorimac's sisters, and Saradas and Dinodas, his brothers. They all came to talk to her and look at her and look at each other and then whisper behind their hands like she couldn't hear, "That's the one. They say she tried to pull Primula's boy from the river."

"That wee thing?" others would say, and she didn't like it, even though she really was small compared to the other children she saw. Her feet were smaller than theirs, too, and they made fun of her for it, her small feet with the bits of golden hair over the tops. The bottoms of her feet were as hard as theirs, and she could walk and run as well as any of them, but they said her feet were only two-thirds the size a good child's should be, and from that she thought they meant there was something about her that made her bad.

She heard them talking about her a lot.

"She was in the boat, with her parents. She was the only one who came up. Had Primula's boy by the shirt, the poor thing, never knew he'd stopped breathing halfway."

"Can't find her relatives, poor lass. None will claim her! And they've asked and looked from Northfarthing to Southfarthing and from Buckland to the Tower Hills."

"Old Rory's bent on keeping her. You know Primula was always his pet, and now with her boy, well. Set on raising her up as his own, the Brandybuck, won't hear anything else."

She tried to stay quiet at Brandy Hall, tried to wait for them to stop noticing her so that she could maybe go without anyone seeing, but Menegilda never stopped watching her and then she didn't know where to go. When she tried to think about her parents, who they must have been, all she saw was water and blue and that boy with his wide open, staring eyes, and that time she did cry loudly in her sleep and did have to call for Menegilda, who came and held her until she stopped.

When she tried to think of what was supposed to be there before that day in the river, she thought sometimes that she saw people, strange people, taller than anyone else she'd seen, with small feet and strange clothes. She thought maybe she knew their names, thought maybe they were people her parents had known, but when she tried to think of their names or where they were, her head hurt and her eyes stung, and all she could see was the boy, Frodo, as he lay on the grass.

They asked her how old she was, and she couldn't say. Saradoc said that she must have hit her head in the water, and Amaranth said that she'd heard of that before, how a man who struck his head couldn't remember where he lived after. Rorimac took her on his knee and said that she must be all of six, still a baby, and everyone else nodded and said yes, that must be it.

Still, they said she was small, even for being a baby at six, and for a while she couldn't leave the kitchens because everyone kept trying to feed her. She said she wasn't hungry, but nobody would listen.

They called her Buttercup, and she answered to it, but only because she didn't have anything else to be called. She both liked and didn't like it, because when someone started to call her by that name, at the beginning it sounded right and made something feel good in her chest, but when they finished, the end only sounded wrong and left her feeling like something was missing. But Menegilda liked the name, and so did Rorimac, so she looked when they used it, and she thought it made them happy.

She tried to hang on to the things she saw in her head sometimes, like the man with eyeglasses, the woman with red hair, or the man with short dark hair and a smile she liked. There was a girl, too, with long brown hair, and she was the one she saw the most, the one it hurt most to not be able to remember the name of. They all looked vaguely wrong, somehow, too tall, too skinny, but she thought maybe that was because she wasn't remembering right.

And everything was really nice, because Brandy Hall was a nice place to live and everybody told her how lucky she was because Rorimac and Menegilda already loved her like she was their own daughter, and she thought maybe this was how it was supposed to be.

Except she couldn't forget the things she saw sometimes, like a woman with dark hair and dark eyes whose mouth was mean but whose eyes were sad She remembered them, the others, often in her sleep, and something about them kept her from really believing her name was Buttercup or that she was supposed to be there, that she was going to live there and be a Brandybuck, no matter what Saradoc or Merimac said, and there were times when she felt as if nothing was real and there was no difference between sleeping and being awake.

They had clothes made for her, and everyone said she was a Brandybuck already, Buttercup Brandybuck, and Rorimac talked about having a party and inviting everyone in the Shire so that they could tell everybody that she was going to be a Brandybuck from then on. Menegilda talked about the dress they would make her, and what sort of cake she'd like to eat, because this was a lot like a birthday.

But she still didn't feel like she was where she was supposed to be, or like anything was the way it should be, even if some small part of her was beginning to wish it was.

Then one day she was sitting outside in one of the gardens where there was a little pond when some of the boys who lived down the hill from Brandy Hall came tearing by. They stopped and stared at her, and she thought she should go inside, but before she could they came right up to where she sat and asked if she was the one who was having the party, Buttercup Brandybuck.

"Buttercup," they said, laughing. "Invite us or we'll throw you in there!" and they pointed at the pond.

She couldn't say anything. Something in her chest was hurting so badly that she thought she was going to throw up.

"Come on!" they said, still laughing. "Or we'll give you a good splash!"

Then one of them jumped out and grabbed her arm, and the scream just burst from her mouth, _"Daddy!"_

The boys looked surprised, and one said, "Hey, now, we didn't mean it," but he was still holding her arm and she was seeing the water, the blue and the dark blue and the blue of Frodo's eyes in the water, and then she screamed again and again,_ "Daddy! Daddy!"_

It was Rorimac who came charging out of the house, Rorimac whose red face made the boys scatter to the wind, and then he picked her up and held her. She clung to him, her arms as tight around him as she could get them, she was shaking and sobbing and she was telling him, _"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."_

Later, when he carried her back into the Hall and was telling everyone who'd come running not to worry, it was nothing, she laid her head on his shoulder with her thumb in her mouth and said, "Daddy, can we have milk?"

And she wondered why everyone went so quiet, why no one was saying anything, why Menegilda was putting a hand to her mouth and Amaranth was wiping her eyes, why Rorimac's arms were shaking just a little where they held her, why Saradoc was hiding his face.

"Of course, sweeting," said Rorimac, and his voice was rough like his throat was scratched.

When she lay in bed that night, she decided to start thinking of Rorimac as Daddy, and this was easier than she'd thought it would be. And when she thought again about those people whose faces she sometimes saw, she remembered a woman with red hair, a girl with long brown, a man with dark eyes and a big smile, and a woman with a mean mouth but sad eyes. She thought she was missing someone, thought vaguely that there was supposed to be somebody else, one more, but then Daddy came in with Menegilda to blow out the candle and kiss her good night, and she forgot.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

One day, Menegilda asked if she would like to go on an outing. She was going to Hobbiton, said Menegilda, to see a good friend of hers, who had recently had a baby.

She didn't really want to go. Everyone always looked at her and tried to talk to her, and all she wanted to do was sit in her room and try to remember all those important things that she'd somehow forgotten, like her own name. But Menegilda looked so worried she couldn't say no, and one early morning they both got into a little buggy with two ponies and Merimac drove them down the road to Hobbiton.

It was the first time she had really seen the Shire, but she tried not to stare because she felt that everyone else thought that there were things she should already know. So she held her breath and peeked from the corners of her eyes, and she wanted something to look familiar to her, for anything at all that was like something she might have seen before, and everything was very pretty and very bright, but she recognized nothing. She watched the houses go by, the newer, aboveground ones and the doors in the sides of hills, and she watched the river called the Water flowing by as they drove into Brogmorton, and she thought Menegilda held her hand extra tight so long as they could see the river.

They passed right through Brogmorton, though they stopped several times just to say hello to different people, because they had to hurry to get to Hobbiton with enough time to visit and come back. Every time, someone stared at her, and she wondered if they were looking for Frodo when they searched her face like that, and then it was her who held Menegilda's hand extra tight. Over the side of the buggy, she looked and looked to see if she recognized anything. Once she saw someone with red hair, and her heart jumped into her throat, but it was only a man's head sticking out of a window, and not what she'd thought at all.

Down the road from Brogmorton they came to where the Water turned into the Bywater, which Merimac said was almost exactly at the middle of the four Farthings. She saw Hobbiton up ahead long before they got there, and it was the prettiest place she'd ever seen, with big smials and lots of trees, and Menegilda said it was probably the only place she thought was nearly as pretty as Buckland.

The house Merimac left them at was small and old but neat and full of flowers, with a big garden. Merimac told Menegilda, "I'll see to the ponies and be back to take you to the Green Dragon for sup. Give my respects," and left, and then Menegilda took her hand and went up the little path right to the door.

The woman who came to the door was younger than Menegilda, but she was told to call her Mrs. Gamgee, and she curtsied in her yellow dress and told Mrs. Gamgee a very polite "Hello." Mrs. Gamgee was very nice, but she could see how the two grown-ups were looking at each other, like they wanted to talk alone. When Menegilda asked her if she wanted to go in and see the baby, she just nodded and went into the sitting room while Menegilda and Mrs. Gamgee talked in the kitchen over tea.

The Gamgee house was much, much smaller than Brandy Hall, with not nearly as many rooms or things, but she liked it better because it felt so much more like home. The sitting room was bright and cheerful, with a window full of flowers that looked out into the garden, and the baby was in his cradle by the fireplace, tiny hands waving in the air. Mrs. Gamgee had several children, Menegilda had told her, but they seemed to all be out.

She stood up on her toes and peered over the side of the cradle. She wasn't too sure what a baby should look like, but this one seemed all right, with all the right numbers of toes and fingers. A thick thatch of brown hair, big blue eyes, and a button nose, and the baby made a noise and reached one chubby hand for her face.

"His name is Sam," said Mrs. Gamgee's voice, and she dropped back onto her heels and looked to see Mrs. Gamgee and Menegilda at the door, watching. "Samwise Gamgee."

She turned and pulled herself up to look into the cradle again, and Samwise gurgled a baby's laugh and patted at her hands where they held the edge of the cradle.

She held his little fingers in one hand. "Hello, Sam," she whispered.

They stayed for a while, and Mrs. Gamgee even let her hold Sam for a minute before they left. When Merimac came to get them, it was getting dark and Menegilda decided they should go straight home rather than stop for supper at the Green Dragon, whispering to her son, "She's had enough for one day."

This time they had her sit in the middle, because it was dark and "You just never know, Mother" near the Old Forest. Merimac put a stout billy club between his feet and she spent the whole time looking up at the stars, stars that shone like the glints that wavered on the surface of the Water where the moonlight touched it, so many stars that she couldn't count them or find any shapes. Menegilda had an arm around her the entire time, and she listened to Merimac talking to his mother or whistling.

She was thinking of those others, those faces she remembered, and she was calling them up one by one and thought she had them all: the woman with red hair, the girl with the long brown, and the woman with black. She thought she might have someone missing, had some blurry feeling that she was forgetting something, but then she remembered how Sam had grabbed at her fingers and laughed when she tried to hold him in her arms like Daddy still sometimes held her, and she smiled as she fell asleep in Menegilda's lap.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

They did have a party, after all, but only a small one. They invited all of Buckland, and some people from Hobbiton, like the Gamgees, but for the most part everyone there was a Brandybuck. At the big table, when all the food was brought out, Daddy stood up and raised his cup and said for everyone to hear that Buttercup was a Brandybuck and his own daughter, and then everyone clapped and hurrayed and she had to stand up and tell them thank you very much.

For the first time, she smiled for other people to see, and they cheered and shouted to Daddy that he had better walk softly and carry a big stick, because Buttercup was a pretty Buckland lass indeed.

That night, when Menegilda came to put her in bed and kiss her cheek, she looked up at her and said, "Good night, Mommy."

And Mommy laughed, laughed like grown-ups sometimes did when what they really wanted to do was cry, and kissed her again before she blew out the candle and left. She stayed awake in the dark for a long time, and it seemed to her that something had faded, something maybe small and maybe old but still really important, and she tried to think of what it was, but all she could see in her mind was a hand that lay, cold and white, on the floor, in the grass, first a woman's, then a boy's.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

Those faces stayed with her, though, the ones she couldn't remember or forget. She saw them as she had the first time, the day they brought her to Brandy Hall, the three girls with hair red, brown, and black.

But things became easier, almost by the day, until she could barely guess at a time when she didn't live at Brandy Hall, when she wasn't Mommy and Daddy's baby. And if her name still sat strangely on her skin, if when someone called "Buttercup!" she had to remind herself to turn her head, if sometimes at night she saw the boy, the blue-eyed boy, Frodo, still twelve-years-old, lying on the floor of her bedroom, the green water trickling from his mouth, well, at least it wasn't as scary as it was before, and she learned not to cry out, not to cry, but bear it in silence until morning.

She stayed small. She was always the smallest of the children in the house, the shortest, the skinniest, no matter what Mommy tried to get her to eat or tempt her with. Her feet stayed smaller, too, though the hair was thick and healthy, and she could walk in the woods and over the hills of the Shire with the boldest of them. Daddy told her that it didn't matter what size she was, because the only thing that mattered was the size of a hobbit's heart, not her self.

A few years after she became a Brandybuck, Esmerelda grew big with child. The whole Hall grew full with expectation and joy, because Saradoc was the eldest son of Rorimac, Master of Buckland, and this was a third generation heir. There was supposed to be a huge party when the baby came, and all anyone could talk about was what to name it.

They wouldn't let her go into the room when Esmerelda felt the first pangs, but that was only because she was a child. All the men and children were sent out of the house, to get them out of the way. Daddy and Saradoc and all the other men stood in the garden and talked, about nothing but the baby. Most of the little ones went off to romp where they wanted to, except her. She stood in front of the door, watching it, waiting for something, even though she couldn't exactly say what it was.

So when Mommy came to the door to call Saradoc in, it was her who saw Mommy coming first, it was her who heard the news the loudest, and it was her who slipped in through the door ahead of anyone else.

Esmerelda was hot and tired, her hair let down. She smiled when she came into the room, closing her eyes as if she wanted to sleep. In her arms, in clean white wrappings, was a tiny, wrinkled thing that made her nervous until she realized it was the baby.

Saradoc came in, then, alone, and he went to Esmerelda and kissed her cheek, and then the baby's cheek. His eyes were wet, and they whispered together for a while, their hands on their new baby, until he turned again to go and tell Daddy. As he went, he bent and kissed her head.

"Say hello, Buttercup," said Saradoc, and pushed her gently to Esmerelda. "Say hello."

She went closer, peering cautiously into the blankets, and saw a small, scrunched-up face, eyes tightly shut.

"It's Meriadoc," whispered Esmerelda. "Buttercup, say hello to Meriadoc."

"Hello, Meriadoc," she said a little shyly, and smiled to see the baby's nose ruckle.

When she thought about it later, she wasn't sure why it happened, but it did. She was looking at the baby, touching one tiny finger with her fore, and suddenly she felt as if she were looking at other people at the same time as she was being watched, and in her mind was the sight of two girls, the girls from her dreams, the girls from her nightmares.

Two girls, with hair brown and black.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

She never said anything, but she was always very sure that Buttercup wasn't really her name. Still, it was what everyone called her, so she answered to it, and that was how she was known, as Buttercup Brandybuck, Rorimac Brandybuck's foster daughter.

They tried to send her to school, except that she already knew most of what they taught at Tuckborough. She could read and write, that in a fair hand, and she could do math that many children twice her age had trouble with. Mommy gasped and said what good teachers she must have had, and Daddy claimed that none of his other children had known so much at so young. He even took her into his study and had her write some things for him, a thing he had never done with either of his sons until they were at least of age.

The only thing she didn't know was history, and that was what Daddy taught her instead of sending her to the village school. It was important that she should know her own background, and it was the one great failing in her education, that she knew hardly anything about the Shire and her own people.

She made mistakes, at least at first. The third time she asked what she thought was an obvious question—"But what about the Industrial Revolution?"—and Daddy didn't know what she was talking about—"The what?"—she stopped asking at all. She thought maybe there were lots of things that she thought were real but weren't, things like shoes, which everybody said only Men from the other side of the river wore, and they only made people look at her strangely and whisper in corners about what uncommon folk her parents must have been, so she stopped saying out loud the things that sometimes came up in her head.

Mommy taught her things, too. There were things that every lady should know, and girls learned them earlier than boys did. So she spent as much time with Mommy as she did with Daddy, and she went with her to lots of places, most particularly to Mrs. Gamgee's house, because those two ladies were such good friends, and she got to see Sam more than she'd thought.

It was on one of those visits that little Sam took her hand and said to her, "Buttercup," and Mrs. Gamgee dropped her teacup and Mommy gasped.

"His first word," cried Mrs. Gamgee, and she cried, because she had been so very worried that Sam would never talk, though he was already two years old and everyone had been whispering about how that child wasn't talking.

She held Sam's hand and looked at him, met his solemn, steady eyes, and felt something move in her heart, something that felt like one box falling off of another, and she couldn't say what it was that made her feel a little more lost and a little more awake, but she thought about it the whole trip home.

Except that evening, when she went to kiss Meriadoc good night, he grabbed at her hair and said in his small, bubbling voice, "Buttercup!"

Esmerelda gasped, Saradoc gasped, and then everyone was talking and clapping, because Meriadoc was barely a year old. Everyone agreed that this was the quickest any Brandybuck child had spoken, and Mommy said there must be something about Buttercup that made people want to talk to her, and then she had to tell the story about what happened at the Gamgee's all over again.

She got to hold Meriadoc while the grown-ups had a toast to celebrate, and she felt him drowsing in her arms, his head lying against her shoulder, and there were boxes tumbling everywhere in her head when he whispered, quietly in his sleep, "Buttercup."

Buttercup closed her eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

Buttercup's hair grew thick and gold. Mommy wouldn't let her cut it and she most often wore it in a braid down her back, to keep it out of the way, but when it was loose and unbound, it hung nearly to her knees and shone "like a dragon's hoard in the Sun," said Daddy.

She tried to be a good hobbit girl, to be gentle and do as she was told, to help around the house and watch Meriadoc when Esmerelda needed her to. But it was hard, because she would look out the window and see the bright blue sky and the green and gold fields, and her feet would itch with the urge to go out and run through the grass, between the trees. She felt cooped up when she was inside, felt a yearning to be out and doing something, felt all the days of being a good girl building up in her heart and head until she thought she would explode like a firework

She held it back for as long as she could, for nearly a year, in fact, but then, one day, she really couldn't help herself, and she sneaked out of the Hall and into the wood and ran until all the wind left her lungs and all the feeling of being stifled drained out of her arms and then it turned out that she didn't know where she was.

Daddy had told her many times that the Old Forest wasn't a place for a child. He'd told her the story of all that time ago, when the trees in the Old Forest still moved and had even once come down to attack the High Hay, and of other, stranger things that lived in the dark.

The other children were frightened of those woods, and spoke of a place called Withywindle where no one ever went and was generally said to be queer. Buttercup didn't know much about it, because people were generally unwilling to speak about these kinds of things in front of her, though she didn't understand why, and she thought maybe that was why she wasn't scared at all.

The trees were big and dark. The ground was dank and moist, not completely unpleasant to walk on, and the trees seemed to sway and whisper even when there was no wind. Buttercup moved as quietly as she could, making herself small among the roots and trunks, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched. Her feet left no footprints, she was careful not to brush anything, but she couldn't ignore the idea that someone or something was following her, even though she didn't see anything, no matter how quickly she turned or how fast she walked, or how, several times, she hid herself behind something, and made herself as still as possible.

She knew she must be far away. She couldn't see or hear anything that was familiar, and she could hear and see farther than anyone else, child or grown-up, that she knew. There were lots of things that were strange about her—she was stronger than she looked, for one, and had to be careful not to break things. At first she thought this was normal, and didn't say anything about it because she didn't want to ask nonsensical questions. But then one day she watched Daddy and Saradoc working hard together to lift something she had just the other day moved easily and by herself to the side to get at the shelf behind it, and that was how she knew that this was just one more peculiar thing about her that was different, and then she didn't say anything because she didn't want to be different.

Now she stood and listened as hard as she could, and, somewhere over the noises of the leaves, the trees, and the whispers, she heard a sound as of people talking.

Buttercup followed her ears, and came to a place where the wood broke apart into a small clearing. She approached it as carefully as she could, even getting on her hands and knees, and when she was behind a tree close to the edge of the space, she stopped and listened, but the voices kept talking, low and quiet so that she couldn't make out more than every word out of five, and then she peered around the trunk and over the roots.

There were three of them. They were dark-haired and fair-skinned, and wore leather and boots like woodsmen. They were cloaked and carried a bow and a sword each, and they stood close together while they whispered.

They were Big People.

Something stirred in her head, something old and mostly forgotten that was like an heirloom creaking and spilling dust as she lifted it up, and she remembered two faces that she hadn't seen in years, two girls, brown- and black-haired.

"—shall be gone for a while," one of the Big People was whispering. His voice was low and deep. "I intend to go into Rivendell, as I would have gone three years ago, if matters had not called me directly here from the east—"

She felt so strange. She saw the two girls, as clearly as if they stood in front of her, and other things stirred behind them, other faces, other memories. Her fingers touched a root in the dirt, and she looked down to see that her fingers, which just before had been barely touching the small blue flowers in the shadow of the root, were now curled over the reaching barkflesh, and the blue flowers were crushed under her hand. Her hands looked so peculiar, bigger than they had ever looked before, and her clothes were so tight, as if she'd grown even since she'd put them on, so tight she could hardly breathe. Her feet felt bare and cold, her whole body felt free and loose and awkward all at once, and she sat up on her knees because it was suddenly so hard to breathe, except now she saw that her head came above the roots she'd been hiding behind, where before they had been taller than her even when she was standing—

"What!"

She looked up. The three Big People had turned, their bows in their hands, and they were staring at her. She realized she could see them clearly, that her head came above the highest root, and they could see her as easily as she saw them. She saw jaws drop, saw clearly one man's face, his gray eyes and dark hair.

"A girl," one of the other Big People said, and then she'd turned and was running.

_"Wait!"_ she heard shouted behind her, but she ran anyway, as fast as she could, and it seemed to her that she was going very fast, faster than she'd ever run before, and when she dared to glance behind, just as she entered again the thickness of the trees, she saw a figure standing where she'd been, a Man, his hood thrown back, the gray-eyed, black-haired man, staring after her as she fled.

She ran without thinking, without thought. Leaves brushed at her faces, branches reached for her, but her feet moved of their own, her soft, small feet that hurt when she walked over a stone, and she ran until all the breath left her body and the trees grew smaller and less threatening, and then she collapsed in a heap at the foot of a hill, ringed with blue flowers, from the top of which she'd seen the roofs of Brandy Hall.

When Buttercup opened her eyes again, her feet had stopped hurting. She sat up and looked down at herself, but everything seemed all right. Her hands and feet were as they should be, as they had been that morning. Her dress was stained with dew and grass, and some of the sewing had burst, but she'd been running very hard. Mommy would scold her.

Buttercup didn't want to think about the clearing, about the Big People. She even decided that it was possible that she hadn't been anywhere near Big People at all, but had fallen asleep after her run, right there at the foot of the hill.

She stood, brushed herself off, and made her way home, where Mommy scolded her for not telling anyone she was going out to play, and didn't think at all of the gray eyes that lingered, unnoticed, somewhere in her thoughts.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

She tried not to think about the Old Forest.

For several weeks, she managed not to think about it, to behave, to not let anyone know that her arms and legs tingled like she wanted to throw out her arms and run, that she laid awake at night, unable to sleep, want to get up, to walk, to run, to shout, to do something, anything, to make the tingling stop. She was never tired anymore, she was always just bursting out of her skin, so full of life with nothing to spend it on.

Daddy started wanting her to stay inside, to keep near the Hall, and other people kept their children close to home, too. There was talk of Big People in the woods, tall, hooded Men who skulked in the shadows watching for good folk knew what. Mommy told the servants to lock the windows as well as the doors, to put shutters on everything, and everyone was in a quiet, bad mood.

Buttercup didn't tell anyone about where she'd gone. She had hoped the three Big Men had been a dream, that she'd fallen asleep in the flowers and seen it in her sleep, but when everyone began to talk about the Men in the woods, she knew it had really happened. Were they looking for her? Why? She didn't want to know, but she kept thinking about the Man with gray eyes and whether he was looking for her.

He hadn't looked mean. Buttercup thought that maybe he was just worried, that he thought there was a child lost in the woods. He hadn't seen her that well, maybe he thought she was a Big People girl? Then all she had to do was explain, and he could go away.

The night Buttercup heard at the table that Big People had been seen down near Haysend, she waited until everyone was asleep and sneaked out again. It was unexpectedly easy, with the dogs who slept at the door only looking up and wagging their tails to see her go by, and when she was on the Hill, she slipped from shadow to shadow in the dark as if she'd done it a hundred times before.

The Old Forest was gloomier at night. She walked carefully, but the branches moved and the leaves whispered wherever she went, though nothing reached down for her, and she got the feeling of being watched more strongly than before. But she wasn't afraid, especially since this time she'd thought to stop and borrow a long knife from the box where Saradoc kept his hunting things. She had it tucked into her dress, under her cloak, and somehow this made it easier to be by herself under the trees.

After a while, she realized that she was going too slowly. Her feet and legs itched, and the air felt good on her face. So she held her hood and went at a run.

It felt so good. Buttercup hated sitting still—she couldn't bear to be unmoving for more than a few minutes. To run in the woods was the closest she could get to whatever it was her feet and legs and arms wanted to do, and it felt so good to let herself go that she almost forgot where she was going. When she remembered, when she slowed down enough to notice where she was, she could hear the rippling and gurgling of the river somewhere nearby, and she smelled water on the air.

She came out onto a grassy bank, the dirt turning to mud under her feet. She could see farther up ahead where this river met a bigger one and thought that maybe that was the Brandywine and this, this was the Withywindle.

The stars were out overhead, silver pinpricks next to a glowing Moon. Buttercup stared down into the river, and remembered a pair of blue, blue eyes.

She forgot about the Big People. All she could think about was the water, the boy, Frodo, and how the fear of it sat like a rock in her stomach.

Behind a tree, she slipped out of her cloak and dress and small clothes, leaving them and her knife in a neat bundle under a bush. The night was cold, and she shivered as she went forward, to the edge of the water.

The first step wasn't so bad. It was just cold, was all. Then she kept going, step and step and step, until she was up to the waist in water, and then the faces came to her in her head.

A girl, thin, pale, with long brown hair. Another girl, taller, with fair skin and black hair, dark eyes that looked sad and mean all at once. They stared at her, they watched her, and she tried to remember them but couldn't. She felt strange again, felt a weightlessness in her arms and legs, felt the water lap at her waist, then her hips, then her knees. Her fingers, which had been trailing the surface, were suddenly in the air.

The cold air was bitter on her wet skin. She went forward, another few steps, and she was waist-deep again, and now she saw the brown-haired girl as clearly as if they were standing next to each other, and the girl's mouth was moving, she was calling her by name—"

_"Bu—" The girl's lips moved. "Bu—"_

She shook her head. It was just in front of her, just out of reach...if only she could go just a little further...

Her feet moved on their own and suddenly the water closed over her head.

Water. The silver blue above and the darker blue below.

She saw him look at her. She saw him drowning.

_Frodo,_ she thought. _Frodo._

And she remembered her name.

A hand closed on her arm. It pulled her up.

She gasped when her head broke the surface, but her eyes were already open and she saw him clearly against the moonlight, the black hair, the stern face. She saw his mouth move as he talked to her.

Panic filled her head. She struggled, but he had a good grip, and she only ended up splashing him. He was closer to the bank than she was, was so tall that his feet were on the ground even though hers weren't, and he was trying to make her stop, trying to hold her other arm. She saw that the Man was between her and her clothes.

"Wait, wait, please, I only want—I only want to ask—"

She hit him, hard, in the arm, and he made a noise in the back of his throat and let go. She went under again, but this time found the muddy ground, and then she was coming out of the water, flinging back her wet, braided hair, and was on the bank, running, forgetting that she was naked, and the moonlight was cool on her skin.

She grabbed up the bundle she had left, a bundle that seemed smaller than it had before, and looked back, eyes wide. The Man stood on the bank, one hand outstretched, hood fallen back and hair wet, and she could see his gray eyes all the way from where she stood.

She turned and fled.

Like the time before, she wasn't sure how far she went. All she knew was that she made her legs go as fast as they could, she let the air push in and out of her lungs, and when she stopped, when she tumbled to the grass to lie, panting, on her back, shivering with cold, she couldn't remember why she'd walked into the river.

Again, she'd run straight out the woods and to that hill, the one from where she could see Brandy Hall, big and dark in the night. She pulled on her dress, her cloak, but saw that she'd lost the knife. It had been Saradoc's particular knife, with a bird mark in the handle, and her heart sank because she knew he was going to look for it the next day.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

For a long time, no matter how stifled, how strangled by walls she felt, Buttercup didn't go out again. She stayed inside, like a good girl, playing with Meriadoc, visiting the Gamgees with Mommy, studying with Daddy, and helping around the Hall. The talk of Big People in the Old Forest continued for several weeks, and then they stopped coming, as suddenly as they'd started. Everyone talked about it for a while, but Big People were queer to begin with anyway, and sooner rather than later people found something else to gossip about over their ale, and then everything was back to normal.

Saradoc looked for his knife for several days, muttering about bad memories and sticky hands. Buttercup wanted to say she was sorry for losing it, but then she would have had to say how and where and why, and she just couldn't quite seem to remember any of the hows, wheres, or whys. So she said nothing, Saradoc eventually shrugged and said he'd meant to get a new knife anyway, and nothing came of it.

But none of that helped her legs or her arms, the near-pain she felt when she had to sit still for longer than half an hour. In her sleep she ran the woods, she crawled through dark places, she picked up a big knife and—did things with it she didn't want to think about. Her body felt hot all the time, like a fever, and several times Mommy made her stay in bed because of how hot her face was, which only made things worse, and the servants whispered that Buttercup was a sickly child.

Then, one day, when Buttercup was holding Meriadoc's hand while he staggered around the garden on unsteady legs, she found, under a bench, a small sling. The sight of it made her stop, made her stare, and then, glancing to make sure no one was around, Buttercup walked over and picked up the sling, and found a few small stones.

She took Meriadoc out of the garden and into one of the Hall's courtyards, where Saradoc and Merimac had set up some targets the other day to practice with their bows. She had Meriadoc sit down, made sure there was nothing bad within his reach, and then faced one of the targets.

It was as if she'd been doing it all her life. Her arm came up. The sling whirred over her head. She took aim, she swung—and a small hole burst in the center of the target, a puff of straw and dust.

Buttercup felt the blood rushing in her ears.

"Ho there!"

She turned, startled. Merimac was standing there, in one of the small doors that led back into the Hall, and his mouth was open.

"Whoa, Buttercup," he said, a little breathless. "That's a hundred paces if it's a step! Can you do that again?"

Buttercup flushed. Merimac normally didn't have any use for her, so his attention was unusual and flattering. Turning again, she willingly fit another stone to the sling, brought up her arm, whirred, and let fly.

In the center of the target, the same hole the first stone had made huffed slightly as the second stone passed through it.

She looked back, a little shy. Merimac was staring, at her, at the target, at the sling. He muttered to himself "And with a boy's play sling!" and then went back into the house, saying nothing to her.

Buttercup felt a little disappointed. She went to Meriadoc, taking his hand and helping him to his feet, but then she heard voices at the door and looked to see Merimac coming back out, but now with Daddy and Saradoc, too.

"Watch, I'm telling you," Merimac was saying. "I've never seen anything like it!"

He hurried over to her, took the small sling and gave her a bigger one, a man's sling that she'd seen some of the Brandy Hall men practicing with.

"Again, Buttercup," he urged. "Can you do it again with that?"

Daddy and Saradoc were watching, looking doubtful. Meriadoc stared with wide eyes. Merimac's face was eager and expectant.

Buttercup lifted her arm and swung.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

The neighbors called her a curiosity. Daddy and Merimac called her their little woodsman.

Merimac gave her her own sling, and, later, her own bow. He was the one who took her to the targets and let her shoot as much as she wanted, hitting center every time. He was the one who made her her first leather shirt, a little big so that she could grow into it for a few more years.

He was the one who first took her into the woods, sling on her belt and bow in her hand.

Merimac was a rover. He was the chief hunter of Brandy Hall, the first woodsman. He showed her the different trails, the signs, the small secrets of Buckland and the Old Forest. With Merimac watching, Buttercup bagged her first birds, her first squirrels, hares, and grouse. Merimac at her back, she flitted through the trees of the Old Forest all the way to the Withywindle, though this time she had enough sense to stay out and dry. They went up and down Brandywine River, until Buttercup knew all the land from the Red Downs to the Green Hill Country up to Brogmorton, and from then on she ranged farther afield by herself more often than not. By the time she was thirteen, she knew the Four Farthings better than any hobbit alive except maybe Merimac and Daddy.

Mommy didn't want Buttercup doing those things. She protested, both loudly and with silence, letting such a young child, a girl at that, go roving through the woods as if she were some half-wild wolf pup. She wouldn't have let them do it at all, except that Buttercup begged her to let Merimac take her with him, and Mommy herself said that she'd never seen "you look so happy, Buttercup. I suppose I have no choice. If I tell you no, you'll only sneak out anyway."

That made Buttercup hesitate, made her wonder if Mommy somehow knew about those two nights all those months ago, but Mommy didn't say anything more on the matter after that, so she put it out of her mind.

At Brandy Hall, it became generally said that Buttercup was Merimac's pet, and that she would likely someday be chief hunter of Brandy Hall. Everyone talked about what a good shot she was, how quietly she moved through the woods. Daddy even said that he wouldn't be surprised if Buttercup someday became the leader of the armed men of Buckland, for that was usually Merimac's duty and now it was obvious he was training Buttercup to take his place, just as it was given that Meriadoc would someday be Master of Buckland.

Buttercup wasn't sure what to make of all that talk; she only liked what there was to be had outside, with the clean air, the open sky, the freedom of running as fast and wildly as she wanted. The hunt was good, too, though lately she had taken to hunting more dangerous animals—wolves that preyed on the sheep and the odd fox that crept into the chickens, though Merimac had told her never to tell Mommy or Daddy that he let her do that—and didn't so much like to shoot small birds or animals anymore. She couldn't really see herself leading armed men to do anything, and besides she was still so little and young. Buttercup decided that it was nothing to worry about until she was at least thirty, which would leave her with three more years until she was of age anyway, and put that out of her mind too, until the next thing happened that changed her life, though at the time it didn't seem like anything important.

One late morning, when she was thirteen, she was on the outskirts of Hobbiton. She'd never been that far on her own before. It was her own fault, for the deer she'd been tracking had led her a merry chase westward over field and through the woods, all the way from Woody End, and she'd only barely caught up to it when she found that that was Hobbiton just down the hill.

Buttercup didn't spend much time in Hobbiton, outside of visiting Sam at the Gamgee house. She came on her own, most days, ever since Mrs. Gamgee had passed and Mommy didn't come nearly as often. These were Shire folk, who by and large thought most Buckland folk odd and considered Buttercup Brandybuck one of the oddest. They whispered where they thought she couldn't hear or see, and anytime she came by, all the old gossip was dredged back up, about the river and the boating accident and how Old Rory let his foster daughter run as wild as rabbits when she should have been home learning how to set a table.

The deer was a small one, but still too large to take back to Buckland without bruising it too much. Buttercup was thinking about what to do when she felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck, as they always did when she was being watched, and she whirled, sling in hand.

There was no one there. She looked in the bushes, along the small path she was standing next to, into the trees, but no one stepped out and she couldn't see anyone. She thought she smelled pipeweed and soap, and thought she heard a step or two in the long grass, but she followed her ears and nose with her eyes and they didn't show her anything.

A strange feeling crept down her back. Now suspicious and wary, Buttercup decided then and there to take the deer to the Gamgee house. It had been several weeks since she'd visited, and the Gaffer had sent them a box of the largest, sweetest potatoes just the other day.

Looking around, still convinced that she was being watched, Buttercup bundled up the deer, dragged it over one shoulder, and hurried on to the Gamgee house. The feeling stayed with her almost until she came to the gate of the Gaffer's garden, and only really went away when she'd gone inside.

Sam rushed up to her the moment she came in, taking her hand and calling to let his father know she was there. He was seven years old and the most cheerful little hobbit boy anyone had ever seen, with a wide streak of common sense that was apparent even at that young age. His brothers and sisters came, too, but more shyly, and stared, wide-eyed, at the deer while Sam happily talked to her about the small plot on the garden his father was letting him grow all on his own.

The Gaffer scolded her, of course, saying how a child shouldn't wander so far from home, but he didn't say anything about the deer other than thank you and insisting she stay for dinner. The Gaffer was another one of those people who thought Buttercup was odder than odd, but would never say so for the sake of his late wife's friendship with Mommy.

Buttercup was in the garden, teasing Sam with a bit of rhyming that she'd got out of her head ("I am Sam, I am Sam, Sam I am; that Sam-I-am! Than Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-Am! I do not like green eggs and ham!") when she heard the garden gate creak open and she looked up to see a gentleman hobbit standing in the path.

"Mr. Baggins!" gasped Sam, and then all the children were jumping to their feet, looking very bashful.

"Mr. Baggins!" said the oldest. "We didn't know you were coming!"

"Oh, no, completely my fault," said the strange hobbit. "I was only walking by, and I happened to see a face I didn't know."

Buttercup stood up. Baggins, Baggins—she knew that name...

The gentleman was well-dressed and stout, holding a very well-made pipe. He was looking at her as if he was trying to recognize her, and Buttercup thought she might be giving him the same look.

The Gaffer came out then, and bowed and said something about how unexpected Mr. Baggins was, but Buttercup didn't hear much of it. She was staring at Mr. Baggins, who was staring back.

"So," said Mr. Baggins suddenly, with a peculiar tone. "You must be Buttercup. The one who pulled my nephew from the river."

She didn't know what expression she must have made, but Mr. Baggins immediately looked extremely alarmed and more than sorry he'd said such a thing, Sam clutched at her hand, and the Gaffer and the other children gasped. Her face felt cold and stiff, she vaguely heard Mr. Baggins apologize for mentioning anything like that, and then she was pulling her hand from Sam's, she pushed past Mr. Baggins, she rushed out the garden gate, and then she was running, running, running, and she didn't stop until she saw the lights of Brandy Hall on the hill, far in the distance.

Additional Disclaimer: _Green Eggs and Ham_ belongs to Dr. Seuss.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

When Bilbo Baggins came to visit at Brandy Hall, people said that it was only about time.

He was very polite, not at all unusual. Everyone said that Bilbo Baggins was an eccentric, too rich and too adventurous to be a normal hobbit. The story of how he had once disappeared and been presumed dead but then shown right back up with his bags of gold in the middle of the auction of all his things was a legend in the Shire, one that all the children liked to tell over and over again. He was supposed to have tunnels full of gold, Dwarf friends who visited at all days of the month, and was said to do all sorts of un-hobbitish things that made gossip for weeks at a time. The Buckland folk knew less about it than others did, since they lived farther away from Hobbiton than most, but they heard a lot of what went on.

Buttercup didn't know what to make of him. He sat at the table with her and Mommy and drank tea, and the grown-ups talked quietly about nothing much. She stared into her cup and hoped Mr. Baggins didn't say anything to Mommy about how she'd run away so rudely.

In the middle of the third cup and the second plate of cakes, Mr. Baggins looked at her and said, "I heard you were a rover, Buttercup."

She fidgeted with the sleeve of her dress. Mommy said, "She's a woodsman, this one."

"I saw you in Hobbiton," said Mr. Baggins. "Do you go far often?"

Mommy looked at her, eyebrows raised. Buttercup flushed, but then said, "I've been to the Far Downs, to the Towers. And to the end of the Bindbale Woods, near the Dim Hills."

Mr. Baggins's eyes widened. Mommy's mouth was open. "But, Buttercup," she said, voice shaking, "you've never been away from home longer than the day."

"Sometimes I go with one of the dogs," she barreled on, figuring in for an egg, in for a chicken. "But they get tired too easy, so mostly I go alone."

No one said anything. Mommy looked pale. Mr. Baggins was staring at her.

"Well," said Mr. Baggins, trying to find the conversation again. "Well."

Buttercup closed her mouth, realizing that she was talking because she was nervous. Her mouth was dry, and she was looking down at her hands. She wondered what Mr. Baggins wanted.

"Well," repeated Mr. Baggins, "I didn't mean to pry that out of you, Buttercup. I—"

"I'm sorry," blurted Buttercup.

Mr. Baggins's mouth was open. He closed it, and looked confused. "I don't—"

"I'm sorry," cried Buttercup, and it all came out in a rush, like a flood. "I tried to pull him up, I really did, but he was so heavy and the water was so dark and I couldn't breathe and, and, and I tried to hurry, I tried, and I thought he was all right because there were still bubbles coming out of his mouth, but then they pulled us out and they said, they said he wasn't breathing—"

Her face felt hot. She couldn't see anything for how blurry everything had become. She struggled not to cry, though her throat felt stuffy and wet.

"I'm sorry," she said, again, but it came out as a wail, a low, pitiful wail that she almost couldn't believe was coming from her. "I'm sorry, Mr. Baggins, I'm sorry Frodo died, I'm sorry I couldn't pull him up—"

She put her hands over her mouth to stop herself, and now she really was crying, she couldn't help it, and Mommy had rushed to her side and tried to take her in her arms, but Buttercup got off of her chair, knocking it over, and ran out of the room, down the hall, and out a door, and then there was the thick green grass under her feet.

Buttercup didn't know she was going to the Withywindle until she was already there, throwing herself down onto the high bank, and then she cried like she'd never cried before in her life, as if all the tears in the world were draining out through her. She put her head down onto her knees and her arms over her head, curling into herself as much as she could, and slowly, slowly, the pain seemed to grow less and less until she could bear it and the sobbing became whimpers and the whimpers became sniffling.

When she looked up, he was there.

She wasn't even surprised. It was as if she'd been expecting him to be there, in his dusty cloak and worn leather, his uncombed black hair and his stern gray eyes. He was sitting next to her, though she hadn't heard him come, and he was watching her, his expression nothing but a distant gentleness.

He looked so familiar. Had she seen him before?

For a brief, glittering moment, it was as if she remembered a river like a silver ribbon under a night sky, the stars and Moon glowing overhead, but then it was gone and all she knew was that he felt familiar, this Big Person, and she was, for no reason she could see, not at all afraid.

"Hey now, little one," he said, and his voice was exactly how he looked, low and rough and kind. "This is a far way to come to cry."

"Not if you don't want anybody to hear," she said, and rubbed a sleeve over her face. She was probably a big mess.

She heard him move, heard something splish in the water. When she looked up, he was on a knee in front of her, a hand held out.

He held her chin in one hand as he wiped her face with the cloth in the other. The water was cool and pleasant, his touch soft and easy. She was hardly self-conscious at all, as if it were Daddy wiping away her tears instead of a strange Big Person.

When he sat down again, tucking the cloth into his belt, she asked him, "So, what's your name?"

He nodded. "Most call me Strider."

"I'm Buttercup," she said. "Mommy says I shouldn't talk to strangers, but you don't look like someone who eats little hobbits."

His lips twitched. "No. I suppose I never acquired the taste."

There was a little silence, as they both watched the water. Buttercup was aware of something moving in the back of her head, like something was trying to move a box that had grown simply too heavy to budge.

"Well, I know what I'm doing here," said Buttercup, "but what're you here for? Everybody's been talking about the Big People in the woods, you know. If you were trying to be sneaky and stuff, it's not working."

His mouth moved again like he wanted to smile, but instead he only said, "I am looking for someone."

Buttercup blinked. "You came all the way here to look for someone?"

Now he looked at her, and there was nothing merry about him. "Why do you say that?"

"Say what?"

"That I have come a long way."

She rolled her eyes. "Because no offense, but you look like you could use some good food, a hot bath, and a week of sleep. And nobody gets that kind of hair from sleeping indoors or often."

Now he did laugh, a short, sudden burst of low, startled laughter, as if she'd surprised it out of him. Buttercup smiled shyly.

"No, little one," he said then. "You are right. I have come a very long way, but I did not know I would still be here, looking for someone, when I came."

"Who?" asked Buttercup.

His face did a strange thing. It was as if a door closed somewhere, or maybe a key turned in a lock, and then there was nothing to see but a serious grown-up, no feelings at all. Buttercup had noticed that adults did that a lot, or at least often, but she'd never seen it done so well before.

"Someone," he said, and his voice was just like his face, as if it were empty, "that I am not sure even exists."

She waited, but that was all he was going to say. "Well, I live here. Maybe if you tell me about them, I can tell you where to look."

He still didn't say anything, and she was about to give up and tell him he would probably have more luck asking at the Green Dragon or in Bree rather than wandering in the Old Forest when he said, "A woman, one of my own race, though she is very...small. She has...golden hair, much like yours. I saw her here, once before, swimming in this river."

Buttercup was charmed. "Is she your sweetheart?"

Now his brows went up. "No."

Buttercup blinked. "Do you have a sweetheart?"

He smiled tiredly. "You are a bold child, Buttercup."

"No, I'm just nosy," she assured him. "Well, do you?"

He looked off again, at the Withywindle, and she thought he might not answer, but then he said, "No. No, I do not. I once thought...I once thought that I did, but such is the ardor of youth."

Then he frowned, and, glancing at her, said, "I should not be speaking of such things to you."

"Not your fault I asked," said Buttercup. "All right! So you don't have a sweetheart but you saw this girl in the woods and now you can't think of anything else and you've spent more time than you'd wanted to here just because you're trying to find her. I understand."

He was staring at her, and she could tell he was consternated. "That is not—"

"—what it is at all, I get it," said Buttercup, patting his arm. "Don't worry, Mr. Strider I won't tell anyone. No one will ever know that under this dusty, muddy outside is a soft and mushy inside."

Buttercup looked away then and tried to think. She didn't know of any Big People around the Shire except for the ones in the woods. The nearest place that had any was Bree, and she'd never been to Bree. She'd seen a few Big People, mostly from the a distance in or from the woods, but she'd never seen or heard of a Big People girl wandering through the trees. There was no way she wouldn't have noticed that!

"I'm sorry, Mr. Strider," she said eventually, looking at him again. "I can't think of any Big Person in the Shire, especially not a girl. Are you sure she's not from Bree?"

"I have already—" He checked himself, looked at Buttercup, sighed quietly, and finished, "I have already been there."

"Don't worry, Mr. Strider," she said, patting his arm again. "If you really do love her and you don't give up, I'm sure you'll find her sooner or later. Maybe she's even looking for you, too."

"Buttercup, that is not—" But then he hesitated, they looked at each other, and he only shook his head, sort of half-smiling. "Ah. I will know better than to talk to hobbit strangers from now on."

That reminded Buttercup of exactly what she had waiting for her at home, and she blushed as she stood, brushing off her dress. "I think I should go. Mommy's going to be really worried."

He stood up, too, and Buttercup was abruptly intimidated to find that she barely came above his knee. He only smiled, though, and held out his hand. When she put hers in it, it looked very, very small.

He walked with her, in the direction of the Hedge.

"I do not think we will see each other again for a long time," he said, "so do not go rushing through the woods in tears again, little one. There are things in here that I would not want to find you in my place."

"A long time?" asked Buttercup. "Are you going away?"

"Yes," said Strider, "for a while. Perhaps more." He seemed to think about something for a minute. "I would count it a favor, Buttercup, if you would not speak of our meeting, to anyone."

They stayed quiet for a while, the two of them moving noiselessly through the trees and the brush. Buttercup thought as hard as she could about this Mannish girl with golden hair, but the only girl she knew of who had been wandering the woods at all was herself. Was it possible that she hadn't seen the girl? Perhaps she just hadn't been looking hard enough.

After a while, they came to a space in the trees that Buttercup knew. The High Hedge was only a few miles away, the Hall not far after that, and she felt that familiar weight begin to settle on her again, the weight of being good and quiet and not caring what people said about her.

She stopped, pulling him to a halt with her. When he looked down, she squeezed his hand with both of hers.

"Don't worry, Mr. Strider," she said again. "I'll watch for her from now on, and the minute I see her I'll go and catch her and tell her that you're looking for her. Don't give up! I promise I'll find her for you! And I won't tell anyone, I swear!"

She slipped his hands from his, then, and ran ahead into the trees, and she heard him call after her, his voice seeming to hang in the branches and the leaves, and she tried not to think of how some part of her seemed to grow smaller and dimmer in her head, like something old and forgotten being shoved into a dark corner, a memory of a river and a hand on her arm.

When she emerged from the Hedge and approached Brandy Hall, she saw someone sitting on the little hill of blue flowers, waiting. When she got closer, she saw that it was Mr. Baggins.

He stood up as she came near, and when she was in front of him, wringing the front of her dress with her hands, trying to get the apology out of her mouth, he put his hands on her shoulders and made her look at him.

"It was not your fault," Mr. Baggins said quietly. "Whatever you think, whatever anyone says, anyone at all, it was not your fault, Buttercup."

And like a baby, her eyes filled with tears again. Her jaw quivered and she hiccuped.

She cried again, but more quietly, and he held her like Daddy would have held her.

He told her, in a kind, soft voice, "You were very brave."


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

The happenstance meeting with Strider stayed with her for a long time. She thought about their conversation together for weeks, wondering if it had seemed as weird to him as it had to her. She'd felt so strange, sitting there by the river with him, as if some huge weight had lifted from her shoulders, as if her heart had lightened and she'd been able to talk to him as she wanted and not as others wanted her to. He'd never even questioned why she was crying by herself in the middle of the woods, not as if he didn't care, but more as if he'd been able to just look at her and see what was wrong, as if he could look straight through her and into her heart.

Buttercup did look for the golden-haired girl Strider had talked about. She kept her eyes open wherever she went in the Old Forest, and everywhere else in the Four Farthings. Once, she even went right up to the fringes of Bree, watching the Big People going about their business from the safety of the treeline, but no one she ever saw looked anything quite like what Strider had said.

For a while, she hoped to meet him again, at least once, and spent more time in the woods near Withywindle than ever. But he must have meant what he said, because she never did see him again, not near the Withywindle or in the Shire.

When she was fourteen years old, near fifteen, Bilbo told Buttercup that he wanted to make her his heir.

He said it at supper, when the whole Brandybuck clan was gathered at table. When he'd finished, his cup in hand, everyone turned to stare at Buttercup.

Buttercup stared at Bilbo. "Heir?"

"My sole heir," said Bilbo, "to inherit Bag End and all else, after."

"After?" Buttercup was confused. "After what?"

Bilbo's mouth opened. There was a cough or two up and down the table. "Well, er—after I am gone."

"Then," said Buttercup, "what's the point?"

There was another little silence.

"The point?" said Bilbo.

Buttercup was exasperated, and slightly panicked at the thought that Bilbo might be going somewhere, like Strider. "What's the point of having Bag End if you're going to go away?"

Merimac looked down into his cup, smiling to himself. Daddy and Mommy looked at each other, and everyone else made small noises under their breath.

Bilbo's expression was passing strange; his eyes looked wet. He cleared his throat, adjusted his waistcoat, and said, "Well, Buttercup, you'll have to find that out for yourself, as I've made up my mind. You'll have Bag End, when I've gone. I'll say it again, before all of you: I have made Buttercup my sole heir, and all that I have will be hers."

Buttercup hated the thought of Bilbo going anywhere. Wasn't it enough that Strider had gone away, when she'd only just discovered him? For several weeks after the announcement, Buttercup went to Bag End every day, hurrying over right after breakfast, just to make sure Bilbo was still there.

All the Shire talked about the adoption. They said again and again what a lucky girl Buttercup was, to first be taken into the Brandybuck clan by the Master of Buckland himself and then to be heir to the eccentric Bilbo Baggins, whose tunnels were said to be full of gold. People whispered to each other that life was making up late for all the tragedy she'd suffered early.

Buttercup knew that though Mommy and Daddy loved her very much, the adoption was a welcome relief. It had always been assumed that Buttercup would eventually become the chief hunter of Brandy Hall, but the title was a mostly empty one. She would never have come into any significant property or inheritance, being only a foster and there being so many blood relatives before her, and though Saradoc wouldn't ever have turned her out or done anything less than take care of her, she would never have had any money of her own. Mommy had been worried for years about what would become of Buttercup later, had been carefully hoarding what she could to give her a proper dowry.

Now that she was Bilbo Baggins's sole heir, however, to have Bag End, one of the oldest and most well-appointed smials in the Four Farthings, and inherit his considerable assets after him, Buttercup stood to be one of the most eligible girls of the next fifty years. She knew this very well, mostly because Aunt Amaranth wouldn't stop telling her and anyone else who happened by.

All of a sudden, she was a marriageable girl. Mommy explained it to her, one night as she sat combing Buttercup's hair. Everything was going to change, had changed. She was not only the foster daughter of the Master of Buckland, which was no small thing to begin with, but now she was also an heiress. There would be offers, sooner or later, and she would be expected to accept at least one. She didn't know why the thought depressed her so much, or why, when she remembered hair as black as night and eyes as gray as the clouds in a storm, she was filled with a deep and gentle regret.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon.

Buttercup didn't know how old she really was. She couldn't remember her real birthday, or even the age at which they'd taken her out of the river, her fingers digging into black hair and russet shirt.

Daddy had said she looked about six, and most everyone had agreed, even if some said she was a bit small for six years. He'd asked her then what she'd like her birthday to be, at least until she remembered it, and she'd asked him back what Frodo's birthday had been. Daddy's smile had faltered, his eyes had grown sad, but he'd answered, September 22, and she'd answered back, Mine, too.

She counted it, September 22, every year since Frodo had drowned and she had forgotten everything.

Bilbo's birthday was also September 22. When he found out that they both celebrated the same day, he suggested that she come to live with him so that they could observe her fifteenth and his ninety-ninth together.

"Buttercup, my girl," he said to her, "it is only sense. It would be easier for us to celebrate under one roof, and then our friends wouldn't have to choose between us every year."

Buttercup was paralyzed with indecision. She haunted the woods for days, thinking, trying to figure out how to keep from hurting anyone she loved.

It was Mommy who told her to go.

"You spend more time over there than you do at the Hall, Buttercup," she said gently. "Daddy and I will always be here for you, but if you'd like to try living in Hobbiton for a while, you should. Only visit often."

Buttercup went out into the woods, the dogs barking beside her, and thought.

She thought about how strained Esmerelda's smiles had become, how worried she looked when Meriadoc asked to go along with Buttercup when she went roving, when he practiced with his sling to be just as good as Buttercup, when he said things like how he wanted to be a hunter when he got older, like Buttercup.

She thought about how the other grown-ups, Asphodel in particular, had been in and out of Mommy's sitting room, her face full of worry as she whispered about how bold and exploratory her own children had become.

She thought about Merimac, and how, though he was Daddy's own son and a great woodsman and hunter, he was still only a second son, taking the second place at the table, with less to his name and his rights than Saradoc.

She thought about how other people looked at her sometimes, the neighbors in the Shire and in Buckland, when they saw her coming out of the woods or walking down the road, her dress dirtied and worn at the hem from where she'd gone through the trees and the fields.

She thought about Bilbo, and all the stories he told, of Dwarves and Elves and Men, of Trolls and Goblins and Dragons, and the sword he'd shown her once, which he named Sting, and all the things he knew about the world outside the Shire that no one else did.

She thought about how, if she stayed at Brandy Hall, she would eventually be expected to marry, someday, to get a husband and be a respectable hobbit, as a foster of the Master of Buckland. She thought about what, exactly, it was that Mommy was trying to do for Buttercup when she told her it was all right to go.

She thought, for the first time, about what it meant to be free and obligated to nobody.

The day Buttercup left Brandy Hall, Meriadoc threw his first tantrum. He clung to her arm and leg and howled when Esmerelda tried to pull him from her, shouting red-faced that he would not live apart from Buttercup. Mommy and Esmerelda tried to calm him, telling him that she'd be by often and they weren't so far from each other at all. He hung on and fought until Buttercup herself pried his fingers from her sleeve, telling him that a man like Meriadoc shouldn't behave so, and if he didn't stop she'd never let him through her door. Then he stood with a clenched jaw and fists, trying not to cry, as she hugged her foster parents, hugged Meriadoc one last time, said good-bye to everybody, and walked away, Merimac at her side, down Buck Hill and away from her home of nine years.

At Hobbiton, arriving by way of the road from Bywater, Merimac groaning that he ought to know better than to try to match a march with Buttercup, their walking sticks and cloaks coated with dust, they were greeted by an overjoyed Sam, who threw himself into her arms and then pulled her by the hand all the way to Bag End. He talked all the while about how his dad was the gardener at Bag End and how he, Sam, was being taught to do the same someday, and wouldn't that be grand, because then he and Buttercup could spend all their time together, her being a hunter and him being a gardener.

Bilbo met them at his round door, pipe in hand. He smiled, and Buttercup weakly tried to smile back.

Seeing Bilbo, Sam said, "Thank you, Mr. Baggins, sir! Thank you!"

"Thank you?" said Bilbo inquiringly. "For what?"

"For going to get her, sir," said Sam, and held Buttercup's hand with both of his.


	13. Chapter 13

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon. Seriously, I am not kidding.

When Buttercup was eighteen years old, she met her first Dwarf.

Her hair was thick and long, a brighter gold than the flowers she was named for, coming to the backs of her knees when left loose. She kept it in a braid that she piled on top of her head when she wanted it out of the way, which was often. Sometimes she considered cutting it, but never actually did.

People were always talking about how mature Buttercup looked for her age. She was still small, but by her expressions, her manner, and her speech, many hobbits who hadn't met her before mistook her for being at least ten years older than she was. Bilbo said it was because there was something very grown-up about Buttercup that was atypical of such a young hobbit, and her independent nature, with the inclination towards wandering, gave the impression of an older, more standoffish sort than her looks would normally have suggested.

Buttercup didn't know what everyone was going on about. She dressed how she wanted, she said what she pleased, and went where she would. That was as far as it went, at least in her mind.

It was a lovely afternoon darkening into a lovelier twilight when she came back to Bag End. She'd been roving up near Bindbale again, trying to get up the nerve to go even farther north than she'd ever been before. The pull of the unexplored territory to the north had been on her mind for some weeks, and she'd gone closer to the border of Bindbale than ever, so close that she had nearly walked the shores of Lake Evendim. But then the Sun had begun to set, dark had shadowed the eastern horizon, and she had at last turned her feet home, making up her mind to really go the next day.

At the round door of Bag End, Buttercup hesitated, listening. She heard voices, at least three, two of them deep and unfamiliar. One was Bilbo's, however, and he sounded cheerful, joyful even, and that made her decide that it was all right to go in.

On the wall inside, Buttercup counted two unfamiliar cloaks hanging on the wall hooks, big, thick cloaks with deep hoods. Sitting on the floor beneath them were two large packs, and placed carefully on top were two battle axes, almost identical to each other, wrapped in oiled cloth.

Closing the door behind her, Buttercup was just getting ready to tiptoe on to her room when the door to the sitting room opened and Bilbo looked out.

"Buttercup!" He seemed thrilled. "Come and say hello. An old friend has come visiting with his son."

Buttercup looked down at herself. She wore a green dress, with the old leather shirt Merimac had made for her over it all, mended down one side with her own leather stitching. In a belt she had tucked her sling and a pouch of stones, and she was covered in dirt and leaves from when she'd hidden under a root to avoid a bear.

"Never mind that," said Bilbo. "They've seen a good share of the road on their way here, and I've been telling them what a great wanderer you are." There was more than a hint of pride in his voice. "Our guests know you're no lace doily."

While Buttercup tried to figure out if that was a compliment, Bilbo turned back into the sitting room and said, "Here she is! My niece, Buttercup."

She stepped in somewhat hesitantly, was nearly overwhelmed by pipeweed smoke, and hesitated again.

Two Dwarves sat in two of Bilbo's best chairs by the fire, smoke rings blowing about their heads.

Buttercup knew they were Dwarves. No one had to tell her; she'd heard enough of Bilbo's stories to have some idea what a Dwarf was supposed to look like, and these were the most dwarvish Dwarves she could have thought of.

One was an obviously older Dwarf, with a long beard braided and tucked into his belt. He wore thick, travel-stained leather, and was smoking from the most ornate pipe Buttercup had ever seen. At the sight of her, his bushy eyebrows went up nearly into his hairline.

Next to him was a younger, red-bearded Dwarf, also wearing leather and holding a matching pipe. Upon seeing her, however, the hand holding the pipe dropped down, and he stared at her as if at some unusual animal he had never seen before.

Buttercup regretted not stopping to check her hair for twigs.

"Buttercup," said Bilbo, "this is Gloin son of Groin, a dear friend of mine from back in my burgling days. And this gentleman here is Gimli son of Gloin, his youngest son."

Gloin got to his feet, setting his pipe down on a handy table and bowing at the waist. "At your service, and your clan's."

Buttercup flushed, hesitated, and then curtsied as well as she could. "At yours."

Gimli sat, staring, until a loud and abrupt cough from his father brought him to his feet. He bowed curtly, muttering gruffly under his breath.

There was an awkward silence. Was Gimli glaring at her? Gloin and Bilbo were both staring at Gimli. Buttercup wondered what she was missing.

"Er," said Bilbo. "Well! Buttercup, why don't you, ah, wash up for supper? If you aren't expected at Brandy Hall—"

"Yes, Uncle," said Buttercup, relieved, and rushed out of the sitting room.

Supper was painfully uncomfortable. Buttercup put on her finest dress, which admittedly wasn't anything the Mayor's wife would have bothered with, and sat, unnerved, while Bilbo and Gloin wholeheartedly caught each other up on news and Gimli glared at her from the opposite side of the table. He also seemed particularly tense, moving stiffly and with agonizingly correct manners, as if he were trying not to lose his temper. Whatever had gotten him angry, it had gotten him really, really angry.

Afterward, Bilbo suggested to them, "Buttercup, why don't you show Gimli here the garden?"

Buttercup went pale. Gimli's expression was dreadful to see.

"Er," said Bilbo again, and looked at Gloin, but Gloin was too busy staring at his son. "Well, then, perhaps we gentleman should retire and let my niece, um—"

"—go away," Buttercup finished for him, and curtsied to each of them, made graceful by relief. "Good night, Uncle, Mr. Gloin, Mr. Gimli." Without waiting for a response, she hurried to her room, moving as fast as she could without looking as if she were fleeing for her life.

Buttercup couldn't decide what she'd done wrong. Did she have a face that naturally angered Dwarves? Except Mr. Gloin hadn't seemed put out with her at all, had, in fact, been quite charming in a gruff sort of way. It was only his son, Mr. Gimli, who had glared at her so murderously.

She'd ask Bilbo later, she thought that night, as she prepared to go to bed. If she'd insulted the Dwarves in any way, certainly he'd know and tell her what to do about it. Buttercup listened to the low drone of voices from below, not picking out the words but only letting the sound of their voices, the Dwarves deep and harsh, like stone, and her Uncle Bilbo, moderate and gentle, mingle in her ears as she drifted off to sleep.

The next day, Gimli son of Gloin asked for Buttercup Brandybuck-Baggins's hand in marriage.


	14. Chapter 14

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon. Seriously, I am not kidding.

"Well, of course the very first thing I told them was that you were too young," Bilbo told Buttercup. "They thought you were more like thirty or so, or at least in your twenties. I suppose it had slipped my mind to mention your age until then. I think I even forget myself sometimes, how young you really are."

"Then it's nothing?" asked Buttercup, beginning to feel some relief. "They know I'm too young to marry? He won't ask again?"

"Er, well," said Bilbo, and her heart sank again. "They did agree you were far too young to get married right off, but, well, Gimli's made it clear that he's not opposed to a long engagement, and neither is Gloin. It's dwarvish custom, you understand, these extended betrothals—gives a Dwarf an excuse to go off and do things for himself before he has to settle down. He'll still be a young Dwarf when you're of age, you know."

"Uncle," said Buttercup, and her voice was tremulous. "Uncle, you didn't...you didn't..."

"No, no, Buttercup," Bilbo reassured her hastily. "Would I do something like that to you?"

Buttercup collapsed back in her chair, feeling her life beginning to charge off in a direction she wasn't ready for. Bilbo put his feet up on the footstool and for a while neither said anything.

"I hadn't thought something like this would come up," Bilbo said at length, tapping his pipe thoughtfully, "for at least another ten years."

"You're telling me," muttered Buttercup despondently.

For another few moments, they simply thought, Buttercup staring into the fire and Bilbo blowing smoke rings.

"He isn't a bad lad," said Bilbo carefully, "a lass could do worse. Much worse! He is a Dwarf; lots to be said for Dwarves, actually. And I don't think I'm being too forward when I say he's taken with you—I've never seen a Dwarf jump beard-first into a decision like that."

_"Uncle,"_ wailed Buttercup. "I'm _eighteen_."

"Wouldn't know that by the way you go off on your own, sometimes," smiled Bilbo.

Buttercup looked away, into the fire. She could feel Bilbo's eyes on her face.

"I have to say, Buttercup," he said quietly, "I don't quite understand you. I think no one does. At first I thought you were only a child with a burden too heavy for even most grown hobbits, but you've shown me the error of that. Then I thought for a while that perhaps you were simply closer to Merimac in who you resembled than you were to Saradoc or either of your foster parents, but it's not that either, is it? It's something else about you, my girl, something strange that makes you different from any other hobbit who's ever lived. I hoped when you came to live here at Bag End that perhaps someday I might understand you, but something tells me that I never quite will."

His voice had become soft. serious, the voice of one grown-up speaking to another. Buttercup heard in it a certain tone, a certain acceptance, as if he were speaking not to a girl, but a woman.

"You don't act your age," he went on, "at least not most of the time. There'll be plenty who forget that you're not quite as old as you seem, and there'll be more, I imagine, who see that something in you that makes people want to know you. And there will be those men, too, Buttercup, who will look at you and see something else entirely. Now, I am not your father, and it really should be Menegilda or Rorimac who talks to you about this, but I do love you, as if you were my own daughter, and I want to protect you where I can. So for my sake, and for the sake of everyone who cares for you, be careful. Gimli is a fine lad, a Dwarf through and through, and he spoke his mind as he knew it and was straightforward with you, but there will be those who are not as honest or forthright or as honorable as he is. I don't know if anyone has ever told you this, Buttercup, but you are very beautiful, even to this old, hopeless bachelor, and there's less child in you than there is woman, even at eighteen. And there's something about your eyes, my girl, something that when you look at a man strips him bare to the bone and lays him out for all to see. Gloin did most of the talking, you know, as it isn't proper for a Dwarf to approach anyone about marriage himself, but one thing Gimli did say was that he had never seen anyone or anything lovelier than you, and that the look in your eyes was a truer grace to him than anything that had ever been brought up out of a mine or wrought at the hands of Dwarves or Men, and that is saying something for one of his race."

Buttercup's breath caught. She'd never had anyone say anything like that about her, and to think of Gimli son of Gloin, who had glared at her so over his red beard, speaking in that way was dumbfounding.

Bilbo was watching her, eyes grave. "I won't lie to you, Buttercup. I'm not altogether against this match. You could do much worse, and I don't think it probable that you'll ever be happy with a typical hobbit, gentleman or not. And, too, Gloin is my good and close friend all these years, and I'm not opposed at all to being related to him, even by foster, which would certainly put the Shire and all the other Bagginses into quite a fit! But I'm disposed to think that you know yourself better than any hobbit your age has any business doing, and you'll tell me what you want to do or at least what you definitely don't want to do. All I ask is that you consider it, not for my sake or for anyone else's, but in terms of your own heart. I'm not any Elf or wizard, but even an old traveler like me can tell you that you won't be content in the Shire, not for all your life, and the thought of all the things that could befall you fills me with such fear as not even Dragons could occasion."

He sat back in his chair then, his pipe to his lips, and neither could say anything for several minutes. She had the feeling that he was embarrassed by everything he'd said, and avoided his eyes, trying to find some way around the lump in her own throat.

"I'm only eighteen, Uncle," she managed at last. "I'm not ready."

"I know that, my girl," said Bilbo kindly. "Don't fret. There's plenty of time. Gimli would never hurry you, and if he tries, Gloin or not I'll drum them out of the house!"

That was when, as if Bilbo's teasing threat had been a signal, Buttercup heard Gloin and his son returning from their trip into Bywater, and she rushed out the back door like a wind, face red, what Bilbo had quoted Gimli as saying about her ringing in her ears. For the rest of the day she moped about the hills south of the Bindbale Woods, considering returning to Bag End covered in mud and dog hair.

When she finally did go home that night, long after dark and after several minutes poised at the back door, listening for any sign or noise of Dwarves within, it was to find that Gloin and Gimli had come and gone, having excused themselves early in order to go home and talk things over with their clansmen. A Dwarf's espousal was crucial business, and Gimli was intent on giving the news of the open negotiations to his mother and other kinsmen.

"Open negotiations?" Buttercup's jaw was hanging. "You—you said you would think about it?"

"Now, Buttercup, no need to be hasty," he told her, trying to look busy at his writing table. "If it had been anyone else, I would have sent them packing! But this is Gloin, one of my oldest and closest friends, and it's one thing to tell a country gentleman from the Shire no to his face and quite another to refuse a Dwarf lord without consideration." Bilbo winced even as the words were coming out of his mouth, and he wouldn't meet her eyes.

"A country gentleman?" repeated Buttercup, and Bilbo tried to hide in his book. _"A country gentleman?"_

"They left something for you," interrupted Bilbo, very obviously trying to change the subject. "A courting gift, if you want to look at it. It's right there."

Buttercup wasn't about to be distracted from her impending fit, except that was when she saw what Bilbo was gesturing at and all the breath swept out of her lungs.

Bilbo watched her tiptoe over to stand staring silently down at it. A hand came up, reached out, and hesitated just out of reach.

"An _axe_," breathed Buttercup. "A _battle_ axe."

"Gloin always was a very shrewd judge of character," said Bilbo, leaning back in his chair. "Perhaps it's hereditary."


	15. Chapter 15

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon. Seriously, I am not kidding.

The news of the proposal for Buttercup Brandybuck-Baggins's hand was the talk of the Shire not a whole day after the departure of Gloin and his son.

Buttercup heard about it the following evening, when, as Bilbo wrote in his book at his writing table and Buttercup tried to sew up a torn patch on her leather shirt, they were both alarmed to hear the front door slam open, struck from the other side. Buttercup snatched up a knife from her belt lying in the chair next to the leather, Bilbo reached for a poker from the fireplace, and then they were both shocked almost speechless to see Meriadoc Brandybuck come hurtling into the sitting room.

"Buttercup!" he shouted, and collapsed over her knee. He was gasping for breath, hair and clothes gray with dust, his cloak nearly torn from his shoulders.

"Merry?" Buttercup pushed the leather shirt aside, scattering spools of thread and leather thongs everywhere. "Merry, what are you—"

_"You can't marry the Dwarf,"_ he howled suddenly, getting back on his feet. _"You can't!"_

Buttercup tried to close her mouth. Bilbo was red-faced.

"He'll take you away into the mountains," insisted Merry almost tearfully, still breathless, clutching Buttercup's sleeve. "He'll lock you into his hall under the mountain and then I'll never see you again! You have to stay here!"

Abruptly, he stepped back, straightening his spine. A resolute expression on his dirt-streaked face, Merry fell to his knees, threw out his arms, and proclaimed, in a loud, commanding voice, "You can marry me!"

Bilbo made an explosive noise under his breath. When both Merry and Buttercup turned to look at him, he raised both hands. "Oh, please, don't, um...I, er, I'll just...excuse myself, then."

He put one hand to his mouth and hurried out, forgetting to even close his book. From the other room, Buttercup heard a strangled, smothered noise, as of someone choking.

Buttercup turned back to Merry. He was looking up at her expectantly, a mess in his spring cloak and dust-covered breeches and shirt.

"How did you get here?" she blurted.

Merry looked very proud of himself. "I took a pony."

"You took," said Buttercup slowly, "a pony."

Merry grinned.

Buttercup hurried outside. At the door, an altogether bedraggled pony, wearing nothing but a rope, his hooves, legs, and flanks dragged with mud, stood blowing heavily, head down. When she appeared, the pony whickered half-heartedly and gazed sadly up at her.

"Great-Aunt Amaranth was visiting in Whitfurrows when she heard," explained Merry from behind her. "She came home and told everyone that the Dwarves had come to carry you off. Uncle Merimac laughed so hard he got ale up his nose, and everyone thought Grandfather Rory was choking, so no one noticed when I sneaked out and took a pony to come here."

Buttercup's stomach sank. How far had the news gone? Who had known about it? Had the Dwarves been indiscreet when they had gone down to Bywater, or after, when they had set off for home again? Had Uncle Bilbo told anyone?

Down the road, from the direction of the Gamgee house, she saw another small figure coming hurtling down the way toward Bag End.

"I'll tell Mr. Baggins we're to get married," Merry was saying. "Then he can't send you off to live with the Dwarves! He and Grandfather are good friends, so I think they shouldn't mind. You'll have to wait 'til I'm of age, of course, and we can live here at Bag End, if you want. Brandy Hall is getting quite crowded, anyway."


	16. Chapter 16

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon. Seriously, I am not kidding.

When she was nineteen, on a cold, winter morning, Buttercup followed her feet all the way to the very edge of the Bindbale Woods, and then on into the Dim Hills.

The country here was not much like the Shire. The trees were black and listless to her green-spoiled eyes, and the earth dark and cold. The weather changed drastically the farther north she went, and her thick, gray cloak did not quite manage to keep out the wind.

Buttercup had come prepared. She wore her winter dress, newly made of good, dark green wool, and her leather shirt. On her feet were a pair of good Dwarf-boots, bought in Buckland, and on a belt she wore over the leather shirt were her sling, a pouch of stones, a cloth bag of fifteen arrows, and a long hunting knife with a bird mark in the hilt. Over a shoulder she had slung a bag with some bread and cheese, as well as a rolled up blanket, in case she had to stay out of doors, and beside it her bow.

By the time she was creeping under the trees of the Hills, dusk had fallen. She was just thinking about turning back, of the hot supper Bilbo was no doubt sitting down to, worrying about where she was despite the fact that she'd told him not to expect her back that night, when she heard a noise that she had never heard before in her life.

It was so strange to her ears that Buttercup stopped, crouching behind a root, listening closely. When it sounded again, drifting on the wind from the west, she moved toward it, drawn by a curiosity that overwhelmed her caution, which was weak enough ordinarily.

Nearly half a mile from where she'd heard the noise, she stopped beside a large, many-branched tree. She heard shouting, low and hoarse, the thump of arrows into meat, the howl of wolves, and the clash of steel on steel. She heard guttural, panting breaths, and snarling that put her in the mind of rabid dogs.

A hot tightness spread through her stomach, through her legs. Her muscles seemed to thrum with tension. Without consciously thinking about it, she took the hem of her gown and pulled it up to tuck into her belt, leaving her leather breeches, such as the huntsmen of Brandy Hall wore, and her boots in sight below the cloak. She took the bow from her back, picked an arrow to nock to the string, drew the hood as far down over her face as she could while still being able to see, and moved silently forward.

They were moving through the trees, three figures, one dragging the other and the third lagging behind, a bow in his hands. They were trying to move quietly, but the one carrying the second, unconscious figure was forced to make too much noise, and to her ears they would have done as well to blow horns to announce their coming. The third was obviously trying to cover their retreat, frantically glancing back every third or so step. They were all three cloaked, hooded but for the insensible one, his dark-haired head lolling, and wore the leathers of woodsmen.

They were Men.

Buttercup could hear what was following them. She heard the growls of wolves, the slavering of jaws and the clink of metal. She heard guttural noises, shrieks and howls that she couldn't put to any animal she knew, and the thrashing as of creatures who beat against the woodland rather than through it. She smelled wolf spoor, the fur and blood, and another, rank stench that made her want to gag.

Turning, she ran parallel to the direction the Men were going, easily overtook and outdistanced them. Then, picking a likely-looking spot, she crouched down into a sort of bowl and overhang created by the roots of three trees, directly in their path, and there she waited.

The Men came into sight not seconds later, the one dragging the second collapsing to the ground, spent, breathing harshly and clutching at the black-fletched arrow in his leg. The third, still looking over his shoulder, stopped behind his companions, his fingers tightening resolutely around the haft of his bow, quiver empty and the last arrow at the string.

They whispered together, inaudible. Buttercup raised her bow, picked a target.

The pursuers broke from between the trees like black shapes out of a nightmare. Their huge, hulking forms, their lustful howls, their matted, black hair, their misshapen faces—Buttercup had never seen their kind before, but the name came into her mind as naturally and instinctively as if it had been whispered into her ear every night of her life.

Orcs.

With them were huge wolves, ghostly in the dark, with slavering jaws and cruel yellow eyes. Some came straining at the ends of chains or ropes, snapping madly, but others were loose, and loped far ahead of the Orcs toward the Men, snarling their hunger, teeth glistening in the light of the rising Moon.

Buttercup loosed.

The first arrow took the lead wolf in the throat. A spurt of blood, a thrash of legs, and the beast fell, tumbling over its own flailing paws. The second took the wolf after it, the third the wolf after that, and then the fourth found its way into the eye of an Orc, which went down shrieking even as the arrowhead sank into its brain.

Four arrows, and then the Orcs and wolves slowed together, hesitating, stopping in their mad rush, and the Man's arrow sank half-deep into a second Orc's breast, bringing it stumbling. They bayed and snarled, and came again, and six more arrows found their marks before they took ten more steps, dropping the last two wolves and four more Orcs.

Six Orcs left, but these were wavering, heads craning as they tried to see what was killing them. The Men were staring around, eyes wide, their blades in their hands. Buttercup loosed three more arrows, shooting down three more Orcs as they stood confused, but missed on the fourth and only got its leg. Then the remaining two, the one with the arrow still in its flesh, shrieked with fright and turned, but her fifth arrow found the back of the unharmed creature's neck, and it was only the wounded one that stumbled off, howling with alarm, as she was bringing up her sling.

For a moment there was silence. Buttercup felt the blood hammering in her veins, felt her breath coming even and calm. Her head felt strangely empty, as quiet as the forest was now, but the hand that held the sling was shaking.

One of the Men called out softly into the dark, _"Le suilon,"_ and Buttercup shook her head, coming back to herself. She slipped the stone she'd been reaching for back into the pouch, and tried to stop her hand from shaking.

She heard a groan, and looked out to see the one Man crouching over the unconscious one, even as the third stood looking back and forth. In the distance, Buttercup's ears picked up the grunts and snarls of Orcs, and the noise of bodies through the trees.

_It's a nest,_ whispered a voice in her head, but she ignored it. The Men weren't moving, and she thought that perhaps they hadn't heard it yet.

Now she hesitated. Buttercup had never shown herself to Men before, had never come this close to them, but if she didn't do something, they would all three die, and she was out of arrows. They wouldn't be able to move far with that wounded one, either.

Swallowing, her mouth and throat parched, Buttercup pulled at her hood and crept out of her hiding place.

They saw her almost immediately, their blades flickering up only to hang in the air before lowering again. Their eyes were wide as they watched her pick herself up off the grass, and she tried to picture in her mind what exactly they were seeing.

Buttercup gestured with her hand, first at the wounded Man and then up with her palm open, an unmistakable _Pick him up_.

The Men looked at each other, the two who were still on their feet, and then a long howl drifted through the leaves and came to their ears, and that seemed enough to convince them of how desperate they were. The wounded one got their unconscious fellow by the feet, the whole one his head, and when Buttercup turned and slipped back into the trees, they followed.

The wind had come up, and the night was getting blacker, colder. Buttercup smelled frost on the air. The Man being carried moaned, and the sound seemed to carry for miles.

She led them mercilessly, setting a pace that had the one with the arrow in his leg panting after only a few moments. When she slowed again, holding up a hand for them to stop, his leg wouldn't hold him, and he buckled and cracked his knee on a stone as he went down but did not make a noise.

She crept forward, keeping one ear to the north and west. The land here was thicker with forest, closer to the borders of the Bindbale, and the trees followed clumps of tors and ridges, forming here and there barriers of branches or roots that had to be climbed over or under.

Under two particular trees, big and thick and craggy, Buttercup crawled up to the opening of a small hollow, almost a cave, created by the dead one, long felled and white with death, across the base of the living. She peered in, listening and sniffing as well as she could for any hint of a bear inside, but couldn't hear or smell anything but rotted leaves, old bones, and older bear spoor, and neither could she see any fresh scratches in the bark from either fangs or claws.

The Men were a tight fit. They barely managed to squeeze their way in through the branches, stripping off their cloaks and packs and holding their breaths, and getting the unconscious one in was even more difficult. Still, they managed, teeth gritted and sweat streaking their faces as they tried not to make too much noise or leave too many signs of their movements.

Buttercup kept lookout, frowning as she heard the tumult of the chase coming closer and closer. Her hands worked busily at the dead branches scattered over the ground, and with a handful she scattered the dirt where the Men had passed through, wiping away a faint scuff mark there, a footprint here. Then, she passed as quietly and carefully as she could through the same opening in the branches that the Men had worked their way through, and pulled the branches she'd collected after her, to block up the entrance.

The space under the two trees was close and dark, with just enough room for all three Men, the one prostrate, and her crouching at the opening. They were watching her, the Big People, their faces pale in the near gloom, and she put a finger to her lips for silence, her hood in her eyes.

Into the silence, into the breathless quiet, there came a sound as of snuffling, of low, deep growling. She heard the first wolves come creeping out of the trees, their paws creaking in the thick floor of tangled roots and trees. She heard the grumblings of Orcs, the heavy breathing and the careless tramp of their feet.

The Sun had long set. It was now completely dark, and through the cracks in the branches, Buttercup saw the glints of yellow eyes. She saw the shapes that stumped through the trees barely ten feet away, heads turning here and there, and the gray, paler forms that glided along the ground, noses to the dirt. She could smell the stench of wolf and Orc as if they were walking over her.

Buttercup held her breath. _There's too much bear smell in here,_ she told herself, mouth dry. _Wolves won't go near bears. Not even these._

A wolf's ears twitched. Its head turned, and it stared in the direction of their small hiding place, two narrow points of yellow light in the black woods. But then, even as it began to take the first, cautious step, the Orc holding its rope snarled and, for no reason at all that Buttercup could see, kicked the wolf viciously in the ribs. The beast yelped, snarled, snapped, and then was dragged away, forgetting whatever had caught its attention as the Orc struck at it with the flat of its ugly blade.

They trudged back into the trees, toward the north, Orcs and wolves alike snarling at each other. Buttercup watched them go, still holding her breath, and only when she'd finally lost sight of them, only when she could no longer hear the crush of their feet, the bark or growl of their throats, or smell their stink, did she let all the air she'd been keeping in her chest ease out in a long sigh.

She turned. The Men's eyes were almost all she could see of them, it was so dark. She could hear them breathing, slower, steadier.

"Little one," said one of them quietly, the older one, the one who had been shot in the leg, "you have saved our lives."

Buttercup flushed. Without replying, she edged closer to the Man who had spoken, and gestured at his leg.

"A small thing," he whispered, shaking his head.

She shrugged.

"I expect you know who we are," he went on, "though we had thought that the folk of the Shire had long put out of their minds the Rangers who guarded them. Now tell us your name, so that we might know who we owe our lives to this night."

Buttercup stayed silent. She was listening again, to a noise that she thought she'd heard but was uncertain of.

"Pray tell us," said the younger Man now, and she saw that he was quite young, even in Mannish terms. "Our chieftain will want to know."

There it was again. The footfall, stealthy and measured, but still a footfall. Buttercup peeked out again, through the branches drawn up against the hole, and saw the tall, furtive shapes moving through the trees, huge bows at the nock.

She shoved out the branches, intentionally making noise, and saw at least ten arrows come up, pointed at her. They lowered somewhat when she climbed out, pulling herself up by the bark and the bole, and then Buttercup stood, cloak still close and hood drawn low, waving to the Men in the woods.

They still hesitated, and she doubted they would have come if one of the Men in the hiding place with her hadn't stuck his head out, his blade in hand. Then the bows were lowered or pointed elsewhere, and five stayed behind to keep watch while five came forward, exclaiming softly when the older Man also crawled out.

Buttercup waited until the first of the newcomers had taken the younger Man's hand, clasping his shoulder, and then she slipped back behind the tree she stood against, hopping down from the largest branch to a lower one. A low utterance followed her, a louder call from the young Man who had begged her name, but by then she was already three trees away and sneaking as quietly as a hobbit could sneak, which was more quietly than even these Rangers could conceive, and though they looked for her, though she could hear them trying to follow her tail for nearly half an hour afterward, they didn't find her.

Buttercup went home. She marched all the night, sometimes breaking into a ground-eating lope, and by the gray dawn light saw Bag End down the hill from her, a window glowing warm fire-yellow from the kitchen. Then she stopped to rest, sitting down right there in the grass, pulling the hood from her hair, and she felt the strange, hot thrum of her blood recede back into the distance, back into the dusty and unused corners of her head.

Glossary of Sindarin Terms (Theoretically)

_le suilon_ I greet you


	17. Chapter 17

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon. Seriously, I am not kidding.

One day, Buttercup received a letter.

It was parceled up very tightly, and tied with good, coarse twine. It had traveled far, but in relatively good condition, and the postman was careful to mention that it had been delivered by messenger the last few miles from Bree to Budgeford, from where it had continued by post. The messenger had been a Dwarf in a brown hood, who, on being politely inquired, had grumbled something about the foolishness of youth and the shamefully indulgent nature of aging lords toward their youngest children before stomping off on his way.

Buttercup thought she knew what it was and left off opening it, dawdling so much that it sat for two days on the table in the drawing room before Bilbo observed rather pointedly that unanswered letters were one of the particular cruelties of life. Then Buttercup felt somewhat ashamed of herself, and finally went about opening the letter.

It was written in good, bold ink, with a strong, square hand. The parchment was tough and serviceable, giving off a rather pungent smell, and she could distinctly see a streak of gray in a corner, as of smeared stone dust, and a splotch of brown that smelled, when held to the nose, like a whiff of heady ale.

Gimli was obviously not used to writing letters, much less writing letters to a girl. The letter began "Hail to Buttercup the only niece of Bilbo, fostered of Rorimac," went on to say "Hope you are well," consisted primarily of "Walked all day. Very hot weather in the mountains. Got here in less time than we thought," concluded with "Hope you are still well," and was signed "Gimli son of Gloin son of Groin son of Farin son of Borin son of Nain who was King son of Oin who was King son of Gloin who was King son of Thorin who was King son of Thrain the Old who was King son of Nain who was King son of Durin who before was the Deathless the sixth of that name."

Buttercup was uncertain how she should respond. Another three days passed while she considered the question.

Bilbo seemed inordinately concerned with the whole thing. He asked every morning and every evening whether she'd answered Gimli's letter yet, and when she said she hadn't, expressed his firm and honest opinion that the poor lad was probably languishing of a broken heart while she showed not the slightest bit of worry or attention.

"Poor boy," said Bilbo. "I don't think he had any idea what he was in for when he decided to go and lose his head over you."

Everyone in the Shire was talking about it. Buttercup Brandybuck-Baggins receiving love letters from a Dwarf gentleman caller was the high point of the noon tea. Aunt Amaranth wouldn't stop lecturing her on what a disgrace she would be to the family if she were to marry so far outside civilized society and Uncle Saradoc took to telling her that when she was the lady of a great mountain hall, he would certainly visit often as he had always wanted to try real dwarvish ale and see a real Dwarf lady. Daddy harrumphed and told her to do what she felt was right but to also keep in mind that Dwarves were a grumpy lot, all in all, who could never appreciate a good joke, and Mommy didn't say anything at all except that she should be careful and "kind, my buttercup, whatever happens, for I'm certain even a Dwarf has a heart, however deep you have to dig to get to it."

Merimac only shrugged. "I've never been underground," he said, and that was that.

When Buttercup finally set quill to parchment, she found it easier than she'd thought. She began with "Hello to Gimli son of Gloin," told him about the "Orcs in the hills. I'd never seen them before, but it turns out they are very stupid and easy to kill, especially if you have a few wounded Men to distract them," went on for a while about "I like the axe a lot. The other day I used it on a Warg, and it cuts bone very easily," concluded with "Hope you are well, too. Why is your hair brown but your beard red?" and signed it "Buttercup niece of Bilbo, fostered of Rorimac son of Gorbadoc son of Marmadoc son of lots of other people I'm always getting into trouble for not remembering."

There.

Buttercup had never deliberately set out to frighten off a man before, but this seemed to her a very good beginning.

Merry went with her to mail it.

"I don't know why you're writing to that man," he said. "Unless you're telling him we're to get married? I shouldn't like it if he kept writing to you even after the wedding, you know." He looked up at her, setting his jaw and crossing his arms to show he meant business. "I," said the eleven-year-old Meriadoc, "am the jealous sort."

Buttercup sighed.

Five weeks later, just when she was relaxing her vigilant watch of the post, a second letter arrived, also wrapped in twine and delivered by a brown-hooded Dwarf. Buttercup let it sit for several days while she got up the nerve to actually open it and see what it said.

This time, there was a ring in it.


	18. Chapter 18

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon. Seriously, I am not kidding.

Since that day in the woods, Buttercup had been keeping a closer eye on those Men who called themselves Rangers.

She'd noticed them before. Once outside the borders of the Bindbale, or even a short way into the Old Forest, it was almost impossible to miss them skulking through the trees. She had kept herself hidden from them, disinclined to approach such disreputable-looking types, until that night in the Dim Hills when she'd been unable to turn her back on the two Men carrying their wounded.

If they had dropped him and fled, Buttercup thought to herself, they could have easily gotten away from the Orcs and the wolves. Instead, they had refused to leave him behind, had been ready to fight to their deaths to defend him.

Buttercup could not stop thinking about that.

She watched them. They were stealthier than the other Big Men she'd seen, chiefly those who lived in Bree, and made up for what little they lacked with a perseverance that she'd only ever seen before in starving wolves. It made it harder for her to stay unheard and unseen, but there wasn't a Man alive who could catch a hobbit, especially one who'd made up her mind that they wouldn't.

They were obviously watching for her. No one went out of his way, but she saw how their eyes searched every tree, every thicket, how they stopped now to examine holes and burrows they wouldn't have glanced in before. She heard them whispering together, a few times, and they would ask each other when they met "Have you seen him? The little fellow?" and they would answer each other "No, not this week."

She considered making herself known to them, but Men were still men and she was still a girl. Likely they would pitch a fit and try to march her straight home, where most people seemed to believe a good hobbit lass should be. And if these were the kind of men who were noble to their fellows but otherwise to women, well. Buttercup decided that the most prudent course of action would be to keep her distance.

But in keeping a watch on those who wandered the wood, Buttercup began to see more than only Men.


	19. Chapter 19

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon. Seriously, I am not kidding.

"The Shire isn't the whole of it, my girl," said Bilbo.

Buttercup turned her head to look at him, her hand falling from her chin. She was sitting by the window, the gray light of early morning cool on her skin. The arrowheads she had been sharpening were gathered in her lap with the whetstone.

Bilbo was standing next to the chair. Buttercup tried to judge how long he had been there, looking at her, but had been herself too lost in thought, staring out into the growing light, her elbows still on the sill.

"Of what?" she asked instead.

"Why, the world, Buttercup," he answered.

Buttercup looked away, out the window again. Her hair was loose that day, thicker and longer than ever before, and she wore her new spring dress, delivered by the seamstress just the other day.

There were a few moments of comfortable silence. Buttercup was looking out the window again, down the road and over nearly the whole of Hobbiton, watching the Sun rise over the town. Bilbo joined her, turning to gaze out over the Hill.

"You'll never be happy here, Buttercup," he said then, breaking the stillness. His voice was kind. "Perhaps someday, when you are old and tired and in need of some peace, like me, but right now, I imagine you are feeling as bored and stifled and desperate as any young adventurer I have ever seen."

Her hands clenched.

"No," continued Bilbo, "right now, you're not like me at all. At your age, I was extremely content to be where I was, at Bag End with my pipe and my mail. I used to be a very proper gentle-hobbit, you know. Hadn't a thought of going off and traipsing around after Dwarves and Dragons, for which I entirely blame Gandalf and his bad influence. But even the properest of the gentlest of gentle-hobbits could see that you aren't at all like that, my girl."

Buttercup could feel it coming—that quick, breathless feeling, the restlessness that was welling up inside of her despite all her attempts to smother it. And, with it, that silly, inexplicable urge to cry.

"I don't mean to, Uncle," she said quietly. "I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be like everyone else."

"Oh, Buttercup," said Bilbo, and she felt his hand rest lightly on her shoulder. "Don't you know that I love you just the way you are? That to be anything else would be to become less? There's nothing wrong with wanting more. Home will still be here, whenever you need or want it."

He left, then, his pipe in hand, trailing the heady smoke of pipeweed, and she heard him in the study, sitting down to his writing table, and the shuffle of parchment in his hand.

Buttercup turned back to the window, the light was warm and golden now, the promise of a perfect spring morning.

"What I mean to say," shouted Bilbo from his study, "is that I am quite inclined to go and see my friend Balin this summer. I understand he's gotten into a holding of his own now, someplace called Moria. I'm quite anxious to see it! I sh'll visit Beorn on the way, as I never did stop by to thank him for coming to help us."

Buttercup sat, staring in the direction of the study, mouth open. There was a moment of silence.

Then—

"Of course, you'll have to come with me," called Bilbo. "Else I'm like to come home and find not one of my good teacups intact."

If he had anything else to say, it had to be postponed, for Buttercup chose then to rush into the study and hang on his neck smothering him with kisses, which embarrassed him quite a lot.


	20. Chapter 20

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon. Seriously, I am not kidding.

Bilbo and Buttercup tried to keep it quiet, at first. When they put in a request at the Hobbiton Post Office to redirect their mail to Brandybuck Hall from the first of the next month on, they also asked them if they might do it without such a fuss, in the interests of not raising a hullabaloo while they put their business in order.

The Officer of the Post very helpfully agreed, pledging to let not a word pass his lips on the matter until at least the twenty-fifth.

By the very next morning, the whole of the Shire knew that Mad Baggins was taking his poor, young, orphaned foster niece on an adventure.

The news of the impending journey of Mr. Baggins and Miss Brandybuck-Baggin, was the topic of the month. Relatives and neighbors alike came by at a nearly constant rate, nosing about for either a chance to impart their two pennies' worth or to at least come away with a bit of gossip. Bilbo was obliged to serve tea practically from first breakfast to last supper, just to accommodate all the people who kept finding excuses to come and talk his ear off, and that left Buttercup to manage all the necessary errands.

Not that Buttercup herself had an easy time of it.

Merry showed up on their doorstep not an hour after first breakfast. "You _can't_ go!"

Buttercup sighed, not looking up from the list of supplies she had been instructed to give to the Gaffer for him to purchase on Bilbo's account. At the bottom of it, she added _Soap, 4_. "I'm almost certain I can."

"No," said Merry doggedly, "no, you can't! You _say_ you're only going on a visit to some of Mr. Baggins's friends, but then you'll get there and you'll think the Shire very boring and you won't want to come back and then you'll marry an—an—_Elf_, or a Dwarf, or something else stupid, and then you'll never come back home again because you'll be too busy making Dwarf—Elf—_Dwelf_ babies!"

Buttercup caught herself staring at Merry, who was red-faced and looking very indignant.

"Merry," said Buttercup slowly, "I promise that, no matter what happens, I…won't make any Dwelf babies."

"That's not the point!" cried Merry, but that was when Esmerelda came through the door in a half-exasperated huff, seizing Merry by the ear and scolding him roundly for escaping his tutor. Buttercup, who had been learning tactics by watching Rangers, beat a strategic retreat before an overwhelmingly superior force.

The same day, later on, Samwise found her in the garden, fletching her last batch of arrows.

He stood there, fidgeting, looking at the ground, until she finally broke and asked, "What is it, Sam?"

He bit his lip. "Well, er…it's only that…um…"

Sam's face was reddening. Buttercup stared. "Sam?"

"Nothin'," he muttered, and rushed away, leaving Buttercup to look after him.

Mommy and Daddy tried to come up with excuses to keep her at home. They were all very weak, in Buttercup's point of view, and half-hearted to boot, but they kept trying anyway until Merimac put a stop to it.

"She'll go whatever you say," he told them bluntly one night at supper. "No use thinking otherwise, or worrying. Give her a bit of pocket money, kiss her good-bye, and she'll be back underfoot before you know it."

Merimac was no great talker, but when he did talk it was usually to say something worth listening to. Daddy shrugged, Mommy wiped her eyes, they slipped a bit of money into her pocket when Aunt Amaranth wasn't looking, and kissed her good-bye. Saradoc did the same later that evening, as did Merimac, who also gave her a sharp little flensing knife. Aunt Asphodel, looking shifty, managed to palm a few pennies into her hand when Aunt Amaranth had her back turned, and both Saradas and Dinodas gave her small presents, a small leather pouch and a clever wooden whistle, as well as a few pennies on the side. And at the very last moment, just as she was leaving, Aunt Amaranth, while shouting at the others that she knew very well and good that they were spoiling Buttercup rotten and hobbit lasses had no business going on adventures anyway and they should all be thrashed for egging her on, slipped a small silver coin into Buttercup's pocket and then, while everyone else was groaning and covering their ears, whispered to her, "Keep that in your boot and don't tell anyone about it, child. A woman ought to have a bit of coin at hand, and no one needs to know about it but you."

When Buttercup arrived home and showed Bilbo her spoils—all but the silver coin—he said that she had made out like a right burglar, which only went to show that she was indeed his family.

"I ought to tell people I'm going away more often," he grumbled. "If my cousins were to shower _me_ with coins in that manner, I'd do nothing but come and go."


	21. Chapter 21

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon. Seriously, I am not kidding.

Buttercup could not bring herself to cut her hair.

It was thick and shining, a river of gold from the top of her head to the backs of her heels. She usually kept it knotted up out of the way when she went roving, or perhaps in a braid when she was at home. Every evening she washed it, despite any and all protests from her uncle, her parents, and her relatives that such habits were certain to give her an pneumonia, and used a rose-scented soap that Mrs. Gamgee was much noted throughout the Shire for brewing.

Bilbo maintained that such hair was no hair to be traveling with. Yet even he hesitated at telling her to cut it, for, he said, "Hair to match yours, Buttercup, I have only ever seen on Elves, and given a choice I would choose yours."

He insisted on having ponies. "I walked the whole way the first time, my girl, and I am not inclined to do it again!" It was decided that they would leave Bag End on the twenty-eighth, and stay the night in Buckland, where they would have ponies purchased and waiting for them. From there they would go on to Bree, where they would stop for the night again, and from there it would be the road all the way to the Vales of Anduin.

While Bilbo stayed in his study poring over maps and making himself notes, Buttercup wandered the Shire, feeling more alive than she had ever before. Everything looked brighter, sweeter, and lovelier than even the Shire ever had before, now that she faced the certainty of leaving it, and she passed through all of her favorite places, from the Far Downs to that place beside the Withywindle where she had met Strider.

Strider.

There, on the bank, Buttercup lingered, sitting in the same place where she had huddled before, smaller, younger, full of misery and guilt. She looked into the water, gray in the evening shadow, and thought of eyes as gray as steel, as water by owl light.

Buttercup wondered if he had ever found his golden-haired girl. She herself had never managed to catch even a trace of the Mannish girl, and had thought many times that perhaps he had caught her after all, and taken her away with him, and that was why he'd never come back. And if her heart clenched a little at the thought, if her chest hurt in a way she found both strangely uncommon and painfully familiar, she didn't think about it, and did her most to ignore it.

It was while wandering the Old Forest that she found it. It was not a very big piece of wood, but it was the hue that caught her eye, the pale tree-flesh, and the sweetness of its scent when she went near it. When Buttercup held the branch in her hands, it was as if her hands were another's, her eyes someone else's, and she looked at the wood in a way she had never done before, and she saw, as clearly as if someone had cut it there, the shape of the bow beneath the bark.

It took her three days to finish it, for she worked slowly, afraid that if she flawed this one somehow, she wouldn't be able to find more wood of the same kind. When it was complete, the bow was an arch of thrice-curved wood, plain and bare, but when she tested it, when she strung it and tried the draw of an arrow, it felt more right than anything she had ever held before.

Buttercup took the bow with her the next time she went to see Merimac, delivering a message from Bilbo requesting that he see to buying the ponies they wanted. Before she could open her mouth, Merimac had seen the bow, and put out his hand.

He turned it every which way, staring at it all the while, but refused to string it when Buttercup offered. He tried to bend the wood from both ends, but could not get it to do more than stretch.

They were in the hunting lodge Merimac had built one winter at the edge of the wood, a shed for furs, really, barely in sight of Brandy Hall. The light was low in there, golden with a summer afternoon, but Buttercup saw very well how strangely Merimac looked at her then, as if he had never seen her before.

"Well," he said at last, and held the bow out to her. "A Withybow, at that."

"Withybow?" Buttercup did not recognize the term. "What is that?"

He ignored her. "Do you know what this is?" he asked, holding up what she could see were bits of bone. "Horn, from the stags that live in the Old Forest."

From the horn, Merimac showed her how to make pieces for the bow tips, to cover the wood beneath the string nock, which protected the bow proper. Buttercup made the horn tips, but it was Merimac who carved them for her, shaping the horn into stags' heads, and cutting, beneath each, his own hunter's mark.

He gave her, too, a baldric she could wear over her chest, from which the bow could hang on her back, and a new cloth in which to put her arrows, which would swing at her hip.

"Keep safe, Buttercup," he told her. Somewhat awkwardly, he touched her hair, a gesture of affection that he had never shown her before and which put a lump to her throat. "And come back. We sh'll never hear the end of it from Aunt Amaranth if you don't." His expression became wistful. "Bring back some stories for me, won't you?"

Then, for some reason, Buttercup's eyes filled with tears, and she felt a terrible sadness that she could not name or place. Merimac had turned away, back to the table at which he had been carving the stags' heads, and Buttercup could not think of anything to do but slip away, quietly, so that he would not know that she had noticed his own expression.


	22. Chapter 22

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Author's Warning: major AU. Absolutely non-canon. Seriously, I am not kidding.

The day before they were to depart for Brandy Hall, the tailor and the seamstress each delivered their final orders. For Bilbo, it was a new suit of traveling clothes, complete with a hooded cloak and a fine hat for calmer weather. He'd insisted on the greenish-brown most used by hunters and other woods folk, for, he said, "You never know when you're going to have to hide from Trolls or spiders." Then he added, darkly, and with an ominous tone, "Or _Elves_."

Buttercup received clothes in the same hue. Hers, however, went directly into a pack, and the seamstress's face, as she handed the package to Buttercup, was extremely censorious.

"Indecent, I tell you," muttered the seamstress. "Completely improper. I ought to speak to your foster parents."

But both Bilbo and Buttercup knew she wouldn't, for she'd accepted an absolutely scandalous commission for the making of those clothes, and she was not about to jeopardize what Bilbo had referred to as her "quiet fee."

That evening, while they were seeing to the very last of their packing and preparing for bed, for they had a very early morning the next day, at about six of the clock, there was a knock on their door.

"Bother," said Bilbo. "If it's Lobelia again, I swear I shan't even leave her the spoons…"

He left the room to get the door, leaving Buttercup to finish writing her letter. She'd been working on it for weeks already, trying to turn a nice enough phrase that it wouldn't feel such a sting for Gimli to receive his ring back. Unfortunately, all that seemed to come out was, "I am too young, you are too hairy, and I don't ever want to get married. To anyone."

She was nibbling the tip of her quill when Bilbo came back, a peculiar expression on his face.

"I believe the door is for you," he said, with a suspiciously straight face. Buttercup opened her mouth to ask him to go and tell them she was already asleep, but he'd already walked into the kitchen.

Frowning, Buttercup got up, leaving her letter on the desk, and went to the door.

She didn't recognize the hobbit standing there. Well, maybe she did—wasn't he a Boffin, by name of Falco or Folco, or something? She seemed to remember being told something about him having been at the top of his class at the school down the hill.

He was perhaps five or so years older than her, tall for a boy his age, and pretty good-looking. Sam's sister Daisy had been sighing over him for months.

"Er, hello," he said, on seeing her. "I'm sorry for coming by so late."

Buttercup waited for him to go on, but he only stood there, red-faced, staring at his toes. The night was a warm one, and Buttercup felt the breeze in her face, her hair, lifting strands of it. She was sweaty from having been moving things in the storage room all day, and was probably a mess. A bath was the first thing at the front of her mind.

"I understand you're leaving tomorrow," he blurted suddenly. "To go to Brandy Hall, and then farther away? I just…I just wanted to say good-bye."

That was actually quite nice. Now she felt guilty for not knowing his name. "That's very nice of you," she said, meaning it.

His face grew even redder. What was wrong with him?

"I was w-wondering," he stammered, "if, well, if you'd…if you'd mind telling me whether…well, I mean, ah…when you should come back, I mean, if you'd think about…if you'd consider, maybe…if you wouldn't mind, perhaps, if I were to—to speak to Mr. Baggins…"

Buttercup stared at him. What in the Shire did he need permission to talk to her uncle for? "Well, I suppose that's up to you," she said uncertainly. "Did you need to talk to him? He was just here."

Now his mouth was hanging open. "Oh, well…I…er…"

Abruptly, he went pale, shut his eyes very tightly, thrust out a fist, and gasped, "I'll wait for you!"

There was something hanging from his fist. Buttercup was so thrown that she just stood there, looking at it.

He was trembling. Finally, when Buttercup did not move for nearly a whole minute, he opened the fist, dropped the thing in it into the grass beside the door, turned, and took off running down the path, downhill toward Hobbiton proper. At the bend in the road, he stopped, turned back, called, "I'll wait!" and then hurried on.

Buttercup looked after him, dumbstruck, for another few minutes, and then it occurred to her to look for the thing he had dropped. It was not hard to find, for the grass beside the front door was very short, and when she picked it up, she realized it was a necklace.

It was carved of wood, she saw, with small, painstakingly cut rings, and the pendant was in the shape of a buttercup. There was a bit of silver set in the middle, nothing too extraordinary but very pretty to look at it, and it was light in her hand, the wood smooth and sweet-smelling.

Feeling a bit dazed, Buttercup went back inside and quietly closed the door.

"Went well?" asked Bilbo casually from where he leaned out of the drawing room.

Buttercup looked at him. "Uh," she said, and showed him the necklace.

He pressed his mouth closed, as if quelling a smile. "Oh. Well. Isn't that pretty."

She was about to open her mouth and ask him what it was really supposed to mean when there was another, somehow diffident knock on the door.

Buttercup was still with dread. Giving her a look that seemed to say _It's all your own fault, you know_, Bilbo went to the door, opened it a sliver, and peered out.

"Er," said Fredegar Bolger's voice, "good evening, Mr. Baggins. If—if it isn't too much trouble, is Buttercup here?"


End file.
